"It is hopeless doing things for people - it is often very dangerous indeed to do things at all - and the only thing worth doing for the race is to increase its stock of ideas. Then, if you make available a larger stock, the people are at liberty to help themselves from out of it. By this process the means of improvement is offered, to be accepted or rejected freely, and there is a faint hope of progress in the course of the millenia. Such is the business of the philosopher, to open new ideas." Merlyn, The Book of Merlyn, by T.H. White

One of the ironies of the modern world is the contrast between poverty, hunger and starvation on the one hand, and disease and emotional distress resulting from overconsumption on the other. While some think we can, and must, redress inequality and alleviate human suffering, others say our destinies are predetermined, by karma and the free market.

In this bitter war for people's minds, the weapons of choice for the forces of darkness are the prevailing mythologies of capitalism and consumerism. Look behind the myths and you will see that the free market is copiously regulated for the benefit of a few, those who trample on the will of governments, such as there be, and the democratic rights of people.

The politics of poverty

According to the Human Development Report 2000, published by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), "About 790 million people are hungry and food insecure, and about 1.2 billion live on less than $1 a day." (p.8) "More than 17% of people in the United States and more than 10% in Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom are income-poor, with the income poverty line set at 50% of the median disposable household income." (p.152)

Inequality is documented in the 1999 Report: "The countries of Eastern Europe and the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] have registered some of the largest increases ever in the Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality. OECD countries also registered big increases in inequality after the 1980s - especially Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. Inequality between countries has also increased. The income gap between the fifth of the world’s people living in the richest countries and the fifth in the poorest was 74 to 1 in 1997, up from 60 to 1 in 1990 and 30 to 1 in 1960.... By the late 1990s the fifth of the world’s people living in the highest-income countries had 86% of world GDP - the bottom fifth just 1%.... The world’s 200 richest people more than doubled their net worth in the four years to 1998, to more than $1 trillion. The assets of the top three billionaires are more than the combined GNP of all least developed countries and their 600 million people." (p.3)

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has estimated the individual ecological footprint, "the sum of six separate components: the area of cropland required to produce the crops which that individual consumes, the area of grazing land required to produce the animal products, the area of forest required to produce the wood and paper, the area of sea required to produce the marine fish and seafood, the area of land required to accommodate housing and infrastructure, and the area of forest that would be required to absorb the CO2 emissions resulting from that individual's energy consumption." According to their estimates, "[t]he Ecological Footprint of an average consumer in the industrialized world was about four times that of an average consumer in the lower income countries." (p.4)

Compared with the "biological capacity" of the earth at 2.18 area units per person, the largest ecological footprints belong to: United Arab Emirates 15.99; Singapore 12.35; United States of America 12.22; Kuwait 10.31; Denmark 9.88; New Zealand 9.54; Ireland 9.43; Australia 8.49; Finland 8.45; Canada 7.66. Most of the Third World live well below the earth's current biological capacity. (Table 2, p.24 - download the pdf file)

While the earth's resources are being squandered by the rich, the suffering of the poor is particularly tragic because it is preventable. Amartya Sen notes that "the undeniable presence of large-scale hunger - affecting hundreds of millions of people - in a world of unprecedented overall prosperity is rightly regarded as an intolerable state of affairs." World food production has exceeded population growth, but economic and social changes are required to ensure that all have access to food.

Solon Barraclough's study of poverty and hunger in South and Central America shows that "serious hunger was almost equally prevalent for low income social groups in several higher-income countries with ample national food supplies such as Brazil and Mexico. Even within countries, rates of serious poverty and malnutrition did not necessarily correlate with average per capita incomes....This suggests the dominant role played by income distribution and poverty in determining adequate access to food at the household level." ("Trends in food security")

From colonization through industrialization to modern free trade and privatization policies, economic changes "primarily benefited local élites, transnational investors...and some sections of the expanding middle classes." ("Poverty, policies, and institutions")

Policies that will help the poor, such as reforms to land ownership, education, health and employment, have, however, been blocked by local power structures or "frustrated by international pressures, generated by national defenders of the status quo, allied with transnational interests." ("Alleviating poverty: At what cost?")

Construction of mega dams has rendered millions of rural Indians homeless and starving. Arundhati Roy points out in this interview how the poor and powerless are called on to sacrifice for the benefit of the powerful wealthy: "But the same people who propose a project like this, if you were to tell them, alright, now we're going to freeze the bank accounts of 500,000 of the richest Indians and redistribute their money to millions of poorer people what would the psychological impact of that be?"

Unemployment, falling wages, inflation, illness, old age, divorce - poverty is often beyond the control of the poor. Incredibly, in the richest nations of the world, where the wealthiest people own more assets than the gross domestic products of many of the poorest nations, there are homeless people and malnourished children. While shops display an overwhelming array of luxuries, governments anxiously reduce taxes to alleviate the consumption dependencies of the wealthy, and reduce social welfare spending on those whose protests are least likely to be heard.

Modern mythologies

The Quest for NAIRU

Linda McQuaig says in The Cult of Impotence (Penguin Books Canada, 1998) that governments in the industrialized countries claim to be powerless to promote employment and social programs because their economies are ultimately controlled by international financiers who cannot be regulated. These powerful financiers can then demand high interest rates and low inflation to encourage and protect their investments. McQuaig traces the course of this belief from the Industrial Revolution, when English philosophers argued that poverty and unemployment were necessary to motivate the masses to labour in factories, to the free market zeal of Milton Friedman, who alleged that there is a natural level of unemployment that is beyond the power of governments to control, to the proponents of NAIRU who theorized that reducing unemployment below its natural level would lead to uncontrollable inflation.

In their quest for the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate for Unemployment (NAIRU), the Central Banks of the industrialized countries manipulate interest rates and therefore the level of investment and consumption. McQuaig shows how the government of Canada reduced spending and increased interest rates to maintain the NAIRU, calculated by the Bank of Canada to be 9.5% in 1996. This in spite of evidence that raising unemployment did not lead to the expected lowering of inflation, nor did a drop in unemployment below the NAIRU lead to increased inflation. (pp.52,57)

The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) describes how the Canadian government is reducing unemployment insurance and social welfare payments, and discouraging minimum wage increases and collective bargaining, in its belief that income supports discourage workers from working, and low unemployment encourages workers to seek wage increases that lead to inflation. The paper argues in detail that the assumptions about wage rates used to calculate the NAIRU are fundamentally flawed and there is no evidence to support the theory.

In fact, in raising interest rates to cut off inflation, the government caused recessions in 1988 and 1994. As well, contractionary policy leads to loss of worker skills among the unemployed, and underinvestment in firms that lowers future capacity, which ultimately cause higher base levels of unemployment. Other contributors to inflation were corporate profits, the Goods and Services Tax, and increases in unemployment and health insurance premiums.

Roberto Chang of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta argues that there is no reliable estimate for NAIRU and that inflation is caused by a number of factors that can be identified and corrected without increasing unemployment. To base economic policy on the NAIRU ignores important data and can be ineffective or counterproductive.

Some fallacies in economic thinking are discussed by William Vickrey. These include the fear of deficit spending (when output is not near capacity), the maintenance of high unemployment based on the NAIRU (or NIARU), assumptions about unemployment such as lack of skills, restrictive labour regulations, or too generous unemployment benefits. According to Vickrey, achieving economic growth and full employment "will require getting free from the dogmas of the apostles of austerity, most of whom would not share in the sacrifices they recommend for others."

James K. Galbraith sets out a plan for full employment through public spending on infrastructure, research and development, and education and training. He argues that the US government should not surrender economic policy to the balanced budget and free market schemes of the Federal Reserve.

Our Mutual Funds

In Canada and the US, 40% - 50% of financial wealth is owned by 1% of the population. The recent stock market boom may have increased the fortunes of the wealthiest North Americans, but for the great majority, wages and assets have been eroded by inflation.

Rising stock prices in the US have been driven by increased profits. However, profits have been obtained by squeezing wages and laying off workers. Also, excessive increases in stock prices have been fueled by speculation. Since a downturn in the market could affect the entire economy, the Economic Policy Institute recommends a transaction tax and a higher capital gains tax on short-term investment as a way to stabilize the economy.

Investment in the financial market does not promote economic development. It only leads to speculative profits or dividend income, according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

The Perils of Free Trade

Trade as exchange based on comparative advantage is win-win, making the best use of climate, soil and terrain. However, this has been distorted by colonization and conquest, where force has been used to create supplier nations and consumer nations. Local economies have been disrupted, populations forcibly moved, political systems subverted and national boundaries drawn for the benefit of the conqueror and colonizer. Today's comparative advantage created by differential wages and working conditions is fundamentally unfair.

Deepak Nayyar says that the argument for free trade ignores critical factors in a nation's economic development. The success of to-day's industrialized nations depended on various forms of protectionism and state support, yet a single free trade formula is being pushed onto the developing nations. Economic history demonstrates the complexitiy of industrialization and requires that nations craft unique policies based on local factors.

Kevin Watkins questions "some of the assumptions underlying the unbridled optimism about the capacity of unregulated markets to sustain growth and address problems of poverty and inequality. The aim is not to challenge the argument that the economic forces associated with globalisation have the potential to enhance human development. There are enough success stories to establish this fact beyond reasonable dispute. Our argument is rather that, under existing international trade and finance rules, globalisation is marginalising some countries, and actively threatening the livelihoods and welfare of vulnerable communities." Within countries, unequal access to productive resources and political power ensure that any benefits of trade are distributed unequally, while the costs are also borne unequally.

The Rise of the WTO

The WTO is not an agency for free trade, but one that enforces the rules for "corporate-managed trade." It has enabled corporations to overrule national laws such as those protecting the environment, local producers, or consumers. For example, the WTO has ruled in favour of private interests in the following cases: the US requirement that foreign oil refiners attain a minimum standard for clean air was challenged by Venezuela; the European ban on the use of artificial hormones for beef cattle and European trade preferences for bananas from former colonies were challenged by the US.

Also included in the WTO are: "intellectual property" rights that prohibit countries from developing low-cost medicines; prohibitions on safeguards or preventative action without proof of harm (affects food labelling); deregulation of services (finance and communications, possibly health, education and water supplies). A Citizen's Guide to the World Trade Organization describes the history and operations of the WTO and urges that we fight TINA (There Is No Alternative) and take action.

Case studies show that "WTO rules need changing so that developing countries can provide domestic support and other regulations to protect the livelihoods of small-holders and promote food security." The experience of various countries demonstrates the following consequences of free trade:

• small farmers are displaced by cheap imports, sometimes from "dumping" - countries disposing of surpluses, resulting as well in concentration of land ownership with wealthier farmers
• falling prices reduce agricultural and processing jobs in rural areas
• impoverished farmers and workers cannot afford to buy cheap imports
• switching to export cash crops reduces domestic food production and increases dependence on imported food
• export prices for commodities are volatile and cannot be depended on.

In North America, farm incomes are falling as corporate middlemen claim an increasing portion of the consumer food dollar. At the same time, factory farms are displacing independent small farmers while destroying the environment and promoting the use of chemicals, hormones and genetic manipulation in food production. Bill Christison argues that WTO rules strengthen the power of transnational corporations and reduce food security in all countries.

WTOWatch provides news and proposals from the WTO and member nations, as well as analyses on trade-related issues.

IMF the Terrible

The IMF is being crafted by international financiers to benefit themselves. Michel Chossudovsky describes how the IMF's intervention in Asian countries has forced bankruptcies, bank failures and widespread unemployment. Meanwhile local corporations are forced to accept foreign investors, for whom the devalued currency creates bargain prices. Chase, Bank America, Citicorp, J. P. Morgan, Salomon Smith Barney, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Credit Suisse-First Boston, UBS/SBC Warburg Dillon Read...the world's largest banks were responsible for the movements in currency and short-term funds that caused the Asian crisis. They are then called in by the IMF as advisors to instruct debtor nations on how to repay their creditors, who are the same banks. Through the Institute of International Finance, these financial institutions aim to control the IMF. In calling for "transparency," they want "access to the details of IMF negotiations with member governments which will enable them to carefully position their assaults in financial markets."

Koreans analyse their economic problems in this piece by James Crotty and Gary Dymsk. Korean growth had been highly dependent on government control of industrial development, trade and money movements. "Over the past 35 years it achieved an average annual rate of growth of both real per-person national income and real wages of about 7 percent while maintaining full employment and a relatively equal income distribution." To finance major new investments, local corporations (the chaebols) pressured the government to deregulate domestic and foreign borrowing, setting the stage for financial collapse.The IMF demand for austerity included the weakening of labour law, the removal of restrictions on foreign ownership of Korean firms and banks, on imports, and on domestic and international capital flows.

The Penitents

Roy Culpeper, president of the North-South Institute, argues that financial crises in Europe, Central and Latin America, and Asia indicate structural instability in the global economic system and suggests that "laissez-faire is a prescription for social turmoil." He critiques current reforms in this more recent speech.

Joseph Stiglitz, (former) Chief Economist of the World Bank, points to the shortcomings of the free market: it may be irrational, such as when it is too focussed on immediate gains or losses; it can be excessively volatile, as a result of short-term speculative investments; and "social risk is not equal to the private risk so that, left to themselves, markets will accumulate more risk than is socially efficient."

While countries are encouraged to look to foreign investment to finance their development, the distribution of capital does not correspond to need. "75 percent of private capital flows to only a dozen countries, and most low-income countries have little access to private capital relative to the size of their economies... Countries seem to get the most private capital when they are growing strongly and need it least and have a relatively harder time accessing capital in hard times when they need it most." Stiglitz argues for regulation on international capital flows. For example, Chile has a reserve requirement on short-term capital inflows that may have insulated it from the 1994-95 crisis.

To control currency speculation, James Tobin proposed a small tax (less than 0.5%) on financial transactions. Such a tax would impose a prohibitive cost on short-term buying and selling of currencies, and yet be negligible in normal trade and investment.

In March 1999, the Canadian Parliament approved a motion to promote theTobin Tax. While working for the Ministry of Finance, Rodney Schmidt was asked by Ministry officials to prepare a paper that would discourage the Minister Paul Martin from supporting the Tobin Tax. Although Schmidt submitted the paper as requested, his research convinced him that the tax was feasible (Linda McQuaig, The Cult of Impotence, 1999, pp.140,154). Schmidt wrote a second paper detailing a mechanism for administering the tax.

The mythmakers

Marketers of ideology

Sally Covington shows how wealthy conservative foundations bankroll rightwing think tanks, academics and political commentators. "Spearheading the assault has been a core group of 12 conservative foundations: the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Carthage Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, the Charles G. Koch, David H. Koch and Claude R. Lambe charitable foundations, the Phillip M. McKenna Foundation, the JM Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Henry Salvatori Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation. In 1994, they controlled more than $1.1 billion in assets; from 1992-94, they awarded $300 million in grants, and targeted $210 million to support a wide array of projects and institutions."

These foundations have:

• used sophisticated and aggressive marketing strategies to push a point of view in the national media, including ghost-writing op-ed pieces and briefing press and policy makers
• made long-term investments in research, advocacy, media, legal, philanthropic, and religious organizations that have directed US politics and policymaking. These groups include the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, Free Congress Research and Education Foundation, the Cato Institute, and Citizens for a Sound Economy; and media groups such as the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, Accuracy in Media, the Center for Media and Public Affairs, the Center for Science, Technology and Media, the Media Research Center, the Media Institute.

The result is an integrated community of mutually reinforcing bodies: "Scholars develop the intellectual basis for conservative social perspectives and policy views. Conservative think tanks and advocacy organizations produce hundreds of policy reports, briefings, action alerts, monographs and analyses on matters both broad and specific, from national fiscal policy to regulatory reform. Business-sponsored law firms pursue strategic litigation to advance conservative legal principles. Conservative media outlets profile policy approaches and proposals to inform and mobilize opinion while attacking the political and journalistic mainstream. And fellowships, internships, and leadership training programs create an effective pipeline for moving young conservatives into the fields of law, economics, government and journalism."

The Fraser Institute has similar designs on using the Canadian media to spread its "ideas about market solutions to economic problems." Dave Barrett quotes the following from an internal Institute document: "At the moment, the Institute does not have an ongoing presence in one of the central debates occurring in North America -- namely, the issue of educational choice. While we have published several books in the area, recently awarded the Prize for Economy in Government to the idea of Charter Schools and also published a Special Issue of Fraser Forum on the same topic, we have no continuing thrust into this area. We should have."

The Institute is a member of the Economic Freedom Network (www.freetheworld.com). Fellow members include:

• Making Our Economy Right (MOER), Bangladesh: "Bangladesh is a fully statist society where politicians promise jobs and economic development, but are unaware that the function of the state and the government is merely to protect individual freedom, liberty, life, property, and the national geographic boundary."
• African Research Center for Public Policy and Market Process, Kenya: "the first research center founded in Africa by the African Educational Foundation for Public Policy and Market Process, an independent educational oragnization registered in the United States. The primary mission of the Center and the Foundation is to promote ideas about free markets and voluntary associations in Africa."
• Association pour la Liberté Economique et le Progrès Social (ALEPS), France: "40 years of the welfare state have led to mass unemployment, fiscal oppression, a social security explosion, an increase in poverty and inequality, and a loss of moral virtues and spiritual values."

FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) analyzed think-tank citations by major print and broadcast media and found, in 1999, "conservative or right-leaning think tanks received 51 percent of all citations, 35 percent of citations went to centrist think tanks, and only 13 percent of the citations went to progressive or left-leaning think tanks."

Topping the list, the Brookings Institution is presented by the media as centrist or liberal, but has strong ties with the Republican Party as well as over 100 corporate supporters, including Bell Atlantic, Citibank, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, NationsBank, Exxon, Chevron, Microsoft, HP, Toyota, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Dupont, Mobil and Lockheed Martin.

Paying the piper

Would you trust Disney, General Electric or Westinghouse for in-depth and unbiased coverage of the news? These companies own ABC, NBC and CBS. Robert W. McChesney details the holdings, as of 1997, of the media giants, including Time Warner, Disney, Bertelsmann, Viacom, News Corporation and Sony.

Time Warner owns film studios (Warner Bros., New Line Cinema), the largest cable TV system in the US, cable TV channels (CNN, HBO, TBS, TNT), magazines (Time, People, Sports Illustrated), the second largest book-publishing business in the world (Time-Life Books, Book-of-the-Month Club), music labels (Warner Music Group) and sports teams (Atlanta Braves, Atlanta Hawks). In January 2001, Time Warner merged with Internet service provider AOL.

Disney owns the ABC network, ten TV stations, 21 radio stations, cable TV channels (Disney Channel, ESPN; holdings in Lifetime, A & E and History channels), film studios (Disney, Miramax and Buena Vista), book publishing (Hyperion Books and Chilton Publications), music labels (Hollywood Records, Mammoth Records and Walt Disney Records), and amusement parks. It has controlling interests in the NHL Anaheim Mighty Ducks and major league baseball's Anaheim Angels.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. owns the Fox network and Fox News, 22 US TV stations, 20th Century Fox film studio, 132 newspapers including The New York Post and London Times, book company HarperCollins, 25 magazines, including TV Guide, and the Los Angeles Dodgers. It owns or has major interests in satellite services reaching Europe, the US, Asia, and Latin America, often under the Sky Broadcasting brand.

Robert Hackett, commenting on media mergers in Canada, says, "basic biases hostile to progressive, democratic values (biases favouring the ethos of private consumption over environmentalism or public goods, for instance, or the political sensibilities of affluent consumers over the less well-heeled) will be intensified in the increasingly commercialized, corporate-colonized Internet environment."

NewsWatch covers the news and issues in media ownership in Canada and Media Channel in the US. Media Central reports the latest news from the business point of view.

The proliferation of information on the Internet may seem to diversify our news sources. However, overload leads most people to the same portal or gateway sites, who in turn, transmit the news mainly from two agencies, Associated Press and Reuters. "A content analysis by John Clare of 251 stories from Associated Press Television (APTV)...found that it presents two types of news. Reporting from elite and rich countries in the West and North focuses overwhelmingly on strong leaders, peace brokers, cultural pursuits, stable business, innovative technology and peaceful protests. News from non-elite nations highlights violence, natural disasters, corrupt, crisis-hit governments, volatile people and rigged elections."

The free press

Chiquita forced the The Cincinnati Enquirer to back down and fire reporter Mike Gallagher for a 1998 story that exposed Chiquita's abuse of Honduran workers. "The articles described at length the multinational's influence over Honduran society, including making use of venal judges, employing deceptive documentation on land ownership to avoid higher local labor costs, and crop dusting its Costa Rican banana workers with harmful pesticides. But, rather than forthrightly denying the charges, which the evidence amassed by Gallagher's inquiry would not easily allow, Chiquita's almost legendary phalanx of public relations and legal warriors made a red herring out of its professed rage over 2,000 highly embarrassing voice mail tapes of its senior executives, which found their way to Gallagher. The reporter claims that he received them from whistle blowers."

Reporter Gary Webb was fired from the San Jose Mercury News for alleging that the CIA suppressed information on a drug smuggling operation that supplied money to counter-revolutionaries in Nicaragua and crack cocaine to Americans. The allegations have been confirmed by a CIA investigation and CIA testimony to a House Intelligence Committee. The US media ignored or minimized the story while ridiculing Webb for flawed reporting. However, the same newspapers had, a decade earlier, reported, citing very little evidence, that the Sandinistas were involved in drug trafficking, That story was eventually exposed as a propaganda hoax perpetrated by the Reagan administration. For more information, go to the Contra Crack index at Robert Parry's Consortium for Independent Journalism.

Propaganda is what the other guys do

Framing (or slant) is one way in which media organizations can bias their coverage of issues and promote an ideology. When a particular frame is dominant across media, the audience is most likely to adopt perceptions within the preferred frame.

Christopher Pieper and Kristen Hughes examined the connection between ownership and media bias in the specific case of reporting on media mergers. "The credo of every journalist entails some respect for the delivery of unbiased, complete, and factual information about the reality that escapes the average person. Though the information delivered is very often factual, and still fairly unbiased, framing research would question how complete a picture of reality is being conveyed." Using the framing concept, the writers conclude that finances and personalities were substantially covered, while the effect of media monopoly on culture and diversity was not.

The Tattler questions the credibility of a report in the National Post on Canadian health care. Publisher Hollinger Inc.'s directors, who include Pierre Des Marais II, Paul Desmarais, Paul Reichman, and Newt Gingrich, are closely connected to private health insurance companies and nursing home chains in the US and Canada.

Canadian health care is under attack by the media both in Canada and the US. Theodore R. Marmor describes a multimedia campaign by Citizens for Better Medicare: "The 'citizens' turn out to include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, The National Association of Manufacturers, and the pharmaceutical trade association. Together they claimed that Canadians suffer from a 'big, government-run system that rations health care, delays access to treatments, including new technology and medicines, and harms too many patients.'"

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives documents the steady erosion of Medicare (elsewhere called "privatization by stealth") as the Federal government refuses to enforce the Canada Health Act. More and more, payments are being shifted to individuals and private insurance plans, services are being contracted to private companies or patients are being sent home to the care of relatives. However, the for-profit system is shown to be inefficient and lacking accountability. Contrary to the privatization propaganda, per-capita government spending is more in the US (US$1,599) than in Canada (US$1,444), and the US system covers only the poorest, the oldest, the disabled, and the military. More information on Canadian health care may be found at the CCPA website.

Former PR agency employee Eric Sparling explains how public relations works: "They'll pay a nutritionist to talk about vitamins on a talk show and plug their product at the same time. The viewer who watches the TV program never knows that the professionally-accredited nutritionist was paid to endorse that product."

An AP story by Seth Sutel describes a growing campaign by pharmaceutical companies to pay celebrities to talk about their health problems in interviews with news media. For example, gymnast Bart Connor "was paid to discuss how he was treating his osteoarthritis with Celebrex, made by Pfizer and G.D. Searle & Co. Several news stories resulting from the campaign, including articles in the New York Daily News and the Associated Press and an appearance on ABC-TV's Good Morning America, did not make clear that Connor was paid."

Critiques of news stories, editorials and talk show commentaries at The Daily Howler show how prominent journalists and commentators from major US newspapers and TV networks distort or invent stories to prop up their opinions. As website editor Bob Somerby puts it, "Socrates said that sophists would use their skills to make weaker arguments defeat the stronger—and our analysts see the occasional sign that the syndrome still lingers today."

Frontiers of democracy

Organizational options

"Experience confirms that, once afforded the opportunity, communities can quickly build their own organizations and develop their own leaders....The most successful community organizations tend to be broad-based - including both poor and non-poor - and to use participatory methods to encourage people's active involvement. One of their greatest accomplishments is to increase people's access to knowledge, skills and technology - often the biggest priority cited by community members."

Walden Bello traces the history of the United Nations, particularly UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development), and the US right wing's efforts to demonize and disempower it. He suggests that: "What UNCTAD should be doing, in the aftermath of Seattle, is challenging the role of the WTO as the ultimate arbiter of trade and development issues....A vigorous UNCTAD that competes in the process of defining global rules for trade, finance, investment, and sustainable development is essential in a pluralistic global economic regime where global institutions, organizations, and agreements complement as well as check one another."

Robert Taylor documents examples of trade unions that have mobilized internationally to challenge transnational corporations. He warns that:

"At every level, organized labour is being forced back on the defensive, particularly outside the industrialized economies of western Europe. The threats of social dumping, of the transfer of production facilities from one low-cost country to an even lower-cost country are often exaggerated. But the pressure on wages and welfare benefits is remorseless in today's competitive world. The calls for protectionism, in some cases disguised by the demand for social clauses in trade agreements, are real and understandable enough even if they are based on a false appreciation of the globalizing economy. A return to the beggar-thy-neighbour policies of the inter-war years would not help the trade unions and would help to impoverish many of their members."

He suggests that within market economies, there can be "social pacts and mutual gains agreements where trade unions, employers and the state find negotiated settlements of key workplace issues and establish a common view on macroeconomic agendas for jobs and growth."

The ICFTU (International Confederation of Free Trade Unions) calls for labour rights, as set out in ILO (International Labour Organization) conventions (freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, protection of women and child workers from exploitation, abolition of forced labour), to be included in international trade pacts such as the WTO.

The world's labour unions, however, have been unable to to find a common voice. David Bacon notes that "there is also a growing global awareness that no national union federation can avoid being whipsawed by the global economy if it cannot find links to a larger world movement."

The World Social Forum was set up in Porto Alegre, Brazil, as an alternate conference to the World Economic Forum, meeting at the same time in Davos, Switzerland. It aims to be "a broad coalition of organizations working on issues such as human rights, sustainable development, education, and environmental protection." The North American media, however, chose to ignore it.

Add your comment on the World Social Forum at the Independent Media Center.

Women, farmers and peasants from India, Bangladesh, the Philippines and Malaysia took part in a People’s Caravan to educate and organize farming communities on "the growing dominance and control of transnational corporations on our agriculture and food systems - which facilitated by the globalization process - has triggered increases in pesticides use, the onslaught of genetic engineering, increased landlessness and land diversion from food production."

Need coffee? The fair trade movement aims to make a difference in consumer choices in the global North by licensing the "fair trade" label to products, brands or companies. For example, "[t]he criteria for fairly traded coffee, the first and most successful fairly labelled product to-date, have four components: 1) a minimum price; 2) purchase of beans from democratically organized small growers 3) provision of pre-harvest credit and 4) agreement to purchase on a long-term, not one time, basis."

Advocacy on the Internet

Grassroots activists have been using the Internet to oppose international corporatism and establish global information and action networks, while the state and corporate interests have adapted to defeat or co-opt them. Examples include the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico, which mobilzed supporters around the world; international opposition that halted the MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment) and is currently challenging the WTO. Harry Cleaver likens these social movements in cyberspace to the ever-changing flow and forms of water:

"the resistance flows not from a unified class seeking a new unified hegemony, but rather from myriad currents seeking the freedom of the open seas where they can re-craft their own movement and their interactions free of a single set of constraining capitalist rules."

Richard Barbrook critiques the prevailing ideology regarding the Internet and democracy. "Implacable in its certainties, the Californian Ideology offers a fatalistic vision of the natural and inevitable triumph of the hi-tech free market - a vision which is blind to racism, poverty and environmental degradation and which has no time to debate alternatives." The hypothetical free market grew from massive public subsidies of both computer and Internet technologies, and the defense department is its main buyer.

According to Barbrook, profit-seeking suppliers are shutting out the poor from telecommunications systems. He argues that the state must provide at least partial support to insure access to the technology.

Adbusters magazine calls for meme warfare (broadly defined, a meme is a belief or concept that is spread by human interaction). Corporations "beam their memes into our brains at the rate of a few thousand ads, brand logos and marketing thrusts per day....[T]o mount a serious challenge against corporate rule, we jammers must build our own meme factory."

Caveat

RAND's analysis of the Zapatista "social netwar" in Mexico theorizes that new forms of conflict and intervention will be based on the primacy of communication networks that organize around the spread of information (or disinformation). It concludes that: "whoever masters the network form stands to gain major advantages," and "psychosocial disruption may become more important than physical destruction," (pp.7,8) possibly involving "propaganda campaigns, psychological warfare, and strategic public diplomacy," (p.22) and that information be added to the economic, political, and military "as a distinct new dimension of policy and strategy" for US foreign relations. (p.131)

George J. Stein looked into the potential for development of information warfare (netwar) by the US defence department. The technological possibilities for creating a virtual reality and targeting it to a receptive population can manipulate not just emotions and beliefs, but also the experience of objective reality. The result may be chaos: "total disruption of the targeted society."

Technology, however, cannot be contained, and Stein argues that: "Perhaps strategic-level Information War, netwar, is, indeed, like nuclear war: the capability must be developed if there is to be deterrence; its employment, however, would be the folly of mutually assured destruction."

Internet surveillance technology is increasingly blurring the line lawmakers have drawn between criminal activity and the legitimate right of citizens to privacy. Examples: US, Britain, New Zealand, Russia.

Resources

United Nations publications investigate, analyze and discuss the many facets of poverty, human rights, economic development and government.

• UNDP United Nations Development Programme. The Human Development Report 2000 is a comprehensive summary of income inequality and the impact of social, political and economic issues on the world's population, including trade and investment, global patenting and new technologies, international crime, environmental degradation, the dominance of transnational corporations, access to global communications and knowledge bases.
• UNCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and Development: discussion papers on globalization, foreign investment and trade
• United Nations Research Institute for Social Development
• UNICEF United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund
• ILO International Labour Organization discussion papers

Third World Network Trade, globalization, biotechnology, human rights...

Focus on the Global South Globalization and Third World issues

IGC Networking site for peace, human rights, environment...latest news and alerts

Corporate Watch publications on the WTO and transnational corporations

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Economic and social policy research

RAFI Rural Advancement Foundation International: analysis and news on biotechnology in agriculture and food production

RACHEL Environment & health research

Union of Concerned Scientists Data, analysis, policy and public action on food, energy, environment, disarmament issues

Federation of American Scientists Research on issues: nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, peace and disarmament, drug abuse, biodiversity

Center for Media & Democracy Investigates public relations, food, health, environment and other issues in the news

Oneworld International news and analysis

Sierra Club of Canada Environment, biodiversity, etc.

Environmental News Network News summaries and stories

Labournet Canadian labour news and issues

ICFTU International Confederation of Free Trade Unions

US State Department Human Rights Reports. Since the State Department does not review the US record on human rights, China publishes a yearly report on the US in the interest of fair play.

Created March 2001. Text, design, illustrations by Sara Ma. Copyright 2001.

Also by Sara Ma:

Almost All William Morris

Canada: National Security and Civil Liberties