" . . . economic globalisation . . .[is] a market tyranny that is extending its reach across the planet like a cancer, colonising ever more of the planet's living spaces, destroying livelihoods, displacing people, rendering democratic institutions impotent, and feeding on life in an insatiable quest for money" ("When Corporations Rule the World", by David Korten, Earthscan, 1995, p12).

In the preface to his book, "Big Business, Poor Peoples" ("BBPP"), John Madeley begins with what might seem a very surprising assertion. He declares that: "Many books have been written about transnational corporations (TNCs). None of them, as far as I am aware, has examined the impact on the world's poor". It is this "serious omission" that Madeley's book sets out to remedy. Certainly, a general examination of the whole question is most timely, whatever studies have been done on aspects of it; and what Madeley has produced serves as a very useful compendium and review of the effects of TNCs on Third World development, as well as the sustainability of the Western Big Business model.

There is an extensive literature on the expansion of the Western economy into the rest of the world. In broad terms, opinion on its outcome ranges from highly critical (e.g. anti-imperialist) through mixed in assessment to highly enthusiastic (free trade and investment mean progress). The last mentioned viewpoint now often endorses corporate "globalisation" as the inevitable and even final destiny of humankind. Debate and discussion still continues over what happened centuries ago, the nature of the factors at work in shaping an international economy, and even indeed how much of an international economy actually existed at any one particular time. But, whatever the perspective, it is clear that a vast world change took place in the second half of the 20^th Century. To quote Madeley's opening statement in Chapter One: "Transnational corporations are one of the most important actors in the global economy, occupying a more powerful position than ever before. Fifty years ago, only a handful existed. Now they number tens of thousands, and have a profound political, economic, social and cultural impact on countries, peoples and environments" ("BBPP", p1). By 2002, TNCs have openly taken over the role of governments in determining policy and practice in many spheres and this process is proceeding fast. Perhaps it is highlighted most clearly at the global level by the attention given to the World Economic Forum at its publicly hyped conferences. This TNC-sponsored Forum is now an institution where corporate and governmental representatives unite in devising future strategy on global issues

According to the "New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought": TNCs or "MNCs [multinational companies] can reduce shortages of capital, management and technology and generate tax revenue, but they can increase technological dependence and concentration, expand unemployment from unsuitable technology, hamper local entrepreneurship, and exacerbate income inequality" (Ed. A Bullock & S Trombley, 3rd edition, HarperCollins, pp550/1). Dictionary contributor and author of this assessment is Economics Professor Wayne Nafziger, Kansas State University. For John Madeley in "Big Business, Poor Peoples", any benefits from TNCs are very definitely outweighed overall by the deleterious effects.

Between 1983-87 and 1992, foreign direct investment (FDI) almost tripled in average annual input into developing countries as TNCs took advantage of the pressure exerted by the big industrialised countries during the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Uruguay Round, which ushered in the World Trade Organisation (WTO). With the Round grinding on to completion at the end of 1994, such FDI almost trebled again between 1992 and 1997, rising from $US50.4 billion to $US149 billion, out of a worldwide total of $US400 billion. Yet "about 80% of FDI has gone to only ten developing countries" ("BBPP", p2); and most of this went to countries in Asia. A key factor here has often been the presence of "authoritarian governments" with a seemingly stable grasp on power over their peoples e.g. Suharto's Indonesia. In turn, TNC economic leverage "effectively gives TNCs a high degree of governance over a developing country, even over a democratically elected government" (ibid., p4). Moreover, TNC interests are continually reinforced by the diplomatic/political actions of their home governments.

Worldwide trends of greater privatisation, liberalisation and globalisation are "putting TNCs in an even more dominant postion", and the WTO deprives states of controls over TNCs that they once used, i.e. controls like certain forms of agricultural protection, or "trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights" (TRIPs), or increasingly, any capacity at all to regulate foreign investment for the national good. TNC representatives actually drafted the WTO's TRIPs Agreement (ibid., p163). Within the international corporate sector itself, of course, power is closely concentrated. "About 100 TNCs accounted for one third of all the FDI in the developing world" in the period that Madeley examined (ibid., p3). In contrast, poor peoples throughout this world "have little or no say in the way their country is run" (ibid., p6), even as their socio-economic position is worsened. "Almost all the studies that have been done on the effects of FDI have concluded that it has led to an uneven income distribution in developing countries", especially in the East/Southeast Asian region (ibid., p9).

As Professor Nafziger well notes: "The markets MNCs operate in are often oligopolies. MNCs benefit from monopoly advantages, such as patents, technical knowledge, superior managerial and marketing skills, better access to capital markets, and economies of scale and vertical integration" (The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought", p551). An "oligopoly" is an industry in which a good or service is provided by only a few firms, and reflects a common TNC market situation where giant firms can exercise influence in many diverse ways - and at worst, close collaboration to effectively control the market. Madeley relentlessly demonstrates in "Big Business, Poor Peoples", using example after example in sectors of the economy ranging from agriculture to tourism, and from mining to manufacturing, that TNCs have harmed millions of lives, crushed and/or foreclosed better development options, and severely damaged the global environment and resource availability that underpin economic potential for everyone.

As noted above, Madeley has special expertise in agricultural development. In this respect, his verdict on the influence of TNCs is damning. Firstly, he observes that TNC activities are at their most visible, and frequently most controversial, when engaged in the essential industry of food production. We can include distribution and trade here too. "Such is TNC power that agricultural and food policy is in danger of being concentrated under the control of the corporations . . . But this growing TNC involvement threatens the livelihoods of millions of resource-poor farmers in developing countries" (ibid., p26). Madeley shows how the agri-corporations have moved to govern everything from actual provision of seeds to the selling of the product on supermarket shelves. This can be seen as vertical integration of industry control, whether within a particular TNC or in the food industry generally.

Capital concentration has greatly increased in recent years with the TNC takeover of smaller seed companies. For instance, over one third of commercial maize seed sales in developing countries is now in TNC hands. Huge corporates like Pioneer Hi-Bred, Novartis, Du Pont, Cargill and Monsanto preside over the plant breeding market and, of course, genetic engineering is being vigorously pushed by these firms as the wave of the future. Accumulating power is very much evident in the oligopolistic and monopolistic features of international agribusiness as these deepen and intensify. Research and development of maize, the third most important staple food of humankind, is coming under the rule of fewer and fewer firms, driven by profit over the interests of the earth's small farmers. Already, there are claims that native maize stock in Mexico is being contaminated through cross-pollination by transgenic maize brought in from the US, thus endangering vital biodiversity and economic viability for local peasant growers (Eureka, Radio NZ, 17/2/02).

To demonstrate the enormous concentration of power and wealth in the global food industry, we include this extract from Bill Rosenberg’s May 2000 speech to the Annual General Meeting of Marlborough Federated Farmers (reproduced in full in Watchdog 94, August 2000). Ed.

In the US, two grain companies control 50% of US grain exports and those two are among the three that slaughter nearly 80% of US beef and the four that mill nearly 60% of US flour. In New Zealand, there are only two main companies (Goodman Fielder and Weston, both overseas owned) in the market for milling and biscuit wheat, and one (Tegel) dominates that for feed wheat.

TNC command of intellectual propery rights, especially in the form of patenting with the application and expansion of biotechnology, "will mean farmers become dependent on TNCs for their seeds, and that the companies will decide what is grown by farmers" ("BBPP", p29). In this connection, Madeley is quoting the renowned Indian scientist and environmentalist Vandana Shiva, who goes on to warn of "a very slippery slope ending in multinational totalitarianism in agriculture" (ibid.; see also her article in Pacific World [now Pacific Ecologist], no. 60, 2001, pp39-50). Using the platform provided by the WTO, the US was the first country to start granting patents on plant varieties. For example, RiceTec, a Texas-based company, took out a patent on an aromatic rice grown in the US which it calls "Basmati", and so claims ownership of rice under this label. "But about 250,000 farmers in India and Pakistan have traditionally grown basmati rice" (ibid., p30). Furthermore, RiceTec has also been marketing what it calls "Jasmine" rice. Again, jasmine rice comes from a developing country, namely: "Thailand, where it is grown by over five million resource-poor farmers" (ibid.). Yet another such example of this process has been the patent of the US company WR Grace on a pesticide using the seeds of the Indian neem tree. Taken to the full extent of Western capitalist logic, farmers in India, Pakistan and Thailand could end up being dependent on companies like RiceTec and WR Grace for their seed - and, furthermore, having to pay for this privilege! This is certainly the eventual endgame of the TNCs if they can get away with it.

"In October 1993, over three million Indian farmers came to the state capital, Bangalore [of Karnataka state], to demonstrate against the likely effects of the Uruguay Round on their livelihoods" (ibid., p32). Farmers were also angry at Cargill for foisting on them sub-standard hybrid sunflower seed. Earlier, in July 1993, protesting farmers in Karnataka had burnt down a Cargill building. Their action was directed against the looming threat of the TRIPs agenda being promoted through the GATT/WTO, an agenda powerfully backed by TNCs like Cargill. They have very reasonable fears that TRIPs "could make it illegal for them to replant seeds that their ancestors have used for centuries without paying royalties to patent holders" (ibid.).

Of late, millions of coffee producers around the globe have again suffered from falling coffee prices. Coffee is grown in over 50 countries and has been the Third World's biggest export earner next to oil. "An estimated 100 million people around the world earn their living from growing the crop, predominantly on small-scale farms" ("Trade and the Poor" ["TP"], p37). Yet, as part of its commitment to the corporate free trade agenda adopted in the late 1980s, the NZ government eagerly took up a dedicated opposition to certain international commodity agreements, such as the International Coffee Agreement (ICA), which had tried to give Third World producers some measure of protection and stability against the play of market forces and TNC manipulations.

"Throughout the 1980s the Third World's terms of trade - the rate at which exports are exchanged for imports - moved ominously against developing countries" (ibid., p8). Of the three major regions - Asia, Africa and Latin America - the decline was most pronounced for Africa, but NZ was still determined to put the boot in to the world's most vulnerable farmers. The ICA collapsed in 1989 due to a combination of ideological opposition from "developed" countries like the US and NZ, and certain chronic problems connected with the actual administration of the Agreement, especially over-supply. It should be noted, significantly enough, that the oversupply problem and other difficulties owed much to the wider context of Western global dominance.

In a 1987 Cabinet paper adopted as NZ government policy and entitled "Membership of International Commodity Organisations", Treasury articulated strong antagonism to the ICA and similar agreements. While Mike Moore as Trade Minister was spinning a message about how the GATT/WTO would ensure higher prices for tropical products, i.e. get prices rising faster than the temperate zone products, which are imported by many developing countries, his own Government had actually grounded its position on the very concern that agreements like the ICA meant higher than acceptable prices. "In particular, in more often leading to higher coffee prices than would otherwise have been the case, the ICA is manifestly not in the interests of New Zealand" (Cabinet paper, p5). So in 1987, the year that the GATT Uruguay Round really got under way, NZ withdrew from both this Agreement and the International Sugar Agreement. Meantime, however, the NZ government was happy to stick with the International Dairy Agreement (IDA) which came under the GATT umbrella. This Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)-dominated Agreement ensured minimum export prices for countries like NZ. There could not be a clearer example of trade hypocrisy than the Government's position on the ICA versus the IDA. Mike Moore was clearly embarrassed about his Government's duplicitous policy. Despite my repeated, polite requests for this very revealing Cabinet paper, Moore, the self-styled great open communicator, steadfastly ignored them until finally coerced under the terms of the Official Information Act.

TNC influence has been critical in GATT/WTO negotiations, including agriculture. Cargill, the huge privately owned agribusiness and trader (the world's biggest family firm), has had extensive power in shaping US government policy on agricultural trade. In the early 1990s, this TNC had a greater sales turnover in coffee than the GDP [Gross Domestic Product] of any of the African countries in which it purchased coffee beans. Combining all its commercial operations, Cargill in 1997 "had an annual turnover of US$56 billion - roughly equivalent to the GDPs of the 16 poorest Sub-Saharan African countries (including Nigeria) put together - making it one of the world's 12 largest companies" ("BBPP", pp.38/9).

"Big Business, Poor Peoples" covers a wide range of ways in which TNCs rule peasant agricultural producers. As we have seen, this includes the control of seeds, patents, and "bio-piracy"; along with the subversion of trade agreements and marketing arrangements which benefit the poor, however flawed and imperfect such mechanisms might have been in practice to date. Generally speaking, corporate influence over supply and demand is fundamental to the domination by Big Business. "TNCs need a regular and reliable supply of good quality raw material to feed into the markets, preferably enough of an over-supply to keep prices of raw materials low" (ibid.). Over-supply, in turn, has been deliberately fostered by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), forcing countries to pay off debt through structural adjustment programmes which emphasise the sacrifice of human welfare for the sake of export-led growth.

"The transfer of land from food crops to export crops is growing fast; an extra million hectares a year is going under plantation crops. Plantations are almost always geared to the export market. Such rapid conversion of land from smallholder agriculture to estates producing for export threatens the existence of resource-poor farming communities and indigenous peoples. It is bad for rural economies and peoples and is likely to increase the migration of people to urban areas. TNCs involved in agricultural trade are nonetheless likely to continue the globalisation process" (ibid., p39). Cargill, Nestle, Unilever and co. are thriving from liberalisation of the expanding agricultural trade at the expense of Third World producers. Their gains are much greater and their costs far less.

TNCs regularly employ both legal and illegal methods on many fronts in order to achieve their narrowly construed goals of profits, growth, market share, etc. An illustration of the former method is the way in which TNC-government deals can work to corporate advantage. A case in point is that of Del Monte in Kenya. This TNC has a long-standing agreement with the Kenyan government giving it a monopoly over the pineapple trade. In turn, the agreement has helped Del Monte corner a large proportion of the world market in pineapple as well as dictate terms in Kenya.

An illustration of the latter method of influence, i.e. illegality, is the fact that Del Monte has imported and used a banned pesticide, heptachlor, for pineapple production in Kenya. Despite Kenya having banned heptachlor in 1986 on the grounds of unacceptable health risks, import records disclosed Del Monte's practice of regularly importing and using this dangerous pesticide. There is also the well-documented "circle of poison" whereby developed countries export harmful pesticides to be used on crops in the Third World; and then the pesticide residues are later ingested by Western consumers in imported tropical products - a kind of "double whammy". Pesticide abuse is a major cost for small farmers, plantation workers, and the landless poor. "In a 1997 report on Costa Rica, the World Development Movement accused the world's biggest banana companies, Chiquita, Del Monte and Dole, of the excessive use of toxic agrochemicals, saying that these had led to health problems for workers such as sterility, kidney failure, memory loss and even death" (ibid., p42). Together, these three companies account for 80% of the global trade in bananas.

NZ's new big dairy TNC, Fonterra (originally Globalco), has explicitly modelled itself on the world's foremost food TNC, Nestle (see Foreign Control Watchdog 97, August 2001, pp7-16). Some people in NZ's dairy industry have long been afraid that Nestle and other foreign TNCs will eventually gobble it up - and such fears are certainly justified. Some among them, again, have hoped that the new Fonterra venture will now instead ensure NZ's independence in the world dairy industry and match its rivals in overseas markets. However, even in its birth pangs, Fonterra has linked itself to Nestle in true oligopolistic style. In the words of Fonterra's Chairperson, John Roadley: "Fonterra was forming joint ventures and alliances with the world's top dairy and food firms . . ." (Press, 23/1/02).

These "joint ventures and alliances" include a closer partnership with Nestle in Latin America. As Fonterra heads off in this direction, it will become more obviously exploitative of Third World peoples and resources, as well as nicely setting itself up for eventual TNC takeover of the NZ dairy industry. John Madeley draws attention to the damaging implications of Nestle's Latin American operations in his book, "Hungry for Trade: How the Poor Pay for Free Trade" ("HFT"). In Brazil, TNCs like Nestle and Parmalat are subverting "traditional cooperatives" (ibid., pp74/5); and likewise in Uruguay and the rest of the "Mercosur regional trade grouping" (ibid., pp87/8).

To be sure, Nestle is one of the most notorious TNCs for its track record of operations in developing countries. The company once gave a rare insight into TNC command over commodity trading in its 1976 report, when it congratulated itself on the application of market forces. Then the largest trader of coffee, cocoa and milk, Nestle proudly declared: "the volume of our purchases of coffee and cocoa is so vast that it influences the market for these commodities" ("For Richer, for Poorer: An Oxfam Report on Western Connections with World Hunger" by John Clark, Oxfam, 1986, p44). Well-known development analyst Susan George "compared information in this report with that published elsewhere and discovered, for example, that in 1974 Nestle paid the Ivory Coast just a quarter of the average world price for coffee and Ghana half the going rate for cocoa" (ibid.).

In the Acknowledgements section of "Big Business, Poor Peoples", Madeley has this to say: "Ironically, I would like to acknowledge the role of Nestle UK. In July 1994, Nestle mounted an exhibition at a meeting of the Church of England General Synod in York. This claimed that the company was adhering to the international code on the marketing of breastmilk substitutes. But an agency report issued at about that time pointed to many hundreds of alleged violations of the code by Nestle. It was health officials, doctors and nurses around the world who were making these allegations. To me, Nestle's case simply did not add up. The idea of this book was born at that meeting, because it made me think about the claims of TNCs and to wonder what they are trying to hide. In researching this book, I found that the effects of TNCs on the poor are more severe than I had expected" ("BBPP", pp.xvi/xvii).

For many years, there has been much international concern over breastmilk substitutes because the grossly unethical promotion and marketing of these products have resulted in the deaths of countless infants (see Foreign Control Watchdog 85, August 1997, pp15-20). Nestle has consistently been the worst offender. It has about 40% of the global market in breastmilk substitutes. Madeley's inspiration for "Big Business, Poor Peoples" has special relevance his section on "Babyfoods" (pp57-64). As he indicates, UNICEF's 1995 report, "The State of the World's Children", stated that: "In 1990, more than one million infants died who would not have died if they had been exclusively breastfed for the first six months of their lives" (ibid., p57). Yet it was back in 1981 that the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNICEF (the United Nations’ Children’s Fund) had brought down a code of conduct for the marketing of breastmilk substitutes. "This was approved by governments at the World Health Assembly in May 1981 by 118 votes to one. The vote against was cast by the USA" (ibid., p59). The WHO Code, which was only voluntary, enjoined several principles for action, including "no advertising of breastmilk substitutes" and "no free samples to mothers" (ibid.). Institution of the Code followed a vigorous worldwide campaign by aid, church, health and other concerned NGOs coordinated by the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN). Getting any genuine commitment from Nestle and co. has proved a quite different story however.

This review of "Big Business, Poor Peoples" has paid a lot of attention to TNCs and agriculture. Given Aotearoa/NZ's size and economic structure, there are plenty of warnings and lessons for us to take on board. As the NZ government moves to make a nation already greatly dependent on foreign powers - through colonial legacy, trade, investment, military/spy agency ties, etc. - even more dependent with emphasis on new free trade agreements, "greenfield" investment, etc., the challenge to what we have left of democracy, independence and sovereignty will become only more acute. As the demands of globalisation become more imperious, the fight against foreign control is getting increasingly serious.

An entry on the "New International Economic Order" (NIEO) in "The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought" by Professor Wayne Nafziger, has this to say: "Since the 1970s, there have been two NIEO visions: that of the Group of 77 (G77) developing countries (adopted by the UN General Assembly, 1974) and the economic liberalism of the rich countries" (p584). Within the framework of the NIEO resolution adopted by the UN were "trade policies conducive to G77 export expansion, and increased export stability" (ibid.). However, "industrialised countries led by the US, opposed much of the NIEO, replacing this with market-friendly policies enforced by the Bretton Woods institutions [i.e. World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF)] they dominated. These policies, introduced during the erosion of G77 bargaining power with the debt crisis of the 1980s, included monetary and fiscal contraction, wage restraint, price and exchange rate decontrol, deregulation, and privatisation" (ibid.). In Aotearoa/NZ this sort of programme became known as "Rogernomics", as ours was the first "developed" country to be most openly and systematically subjected to such New Right policies. Madeley's "Trade and the Poor" takes up the theme of the failure of the NIEO and the prospect for alternatives.

He sets the context in these terms: "The present pattern of international trade was largely established in the colonial era of the 19^th Century . . . This pattern has changed little today" ("TP", p7). The poor have been servants to the rich, although the actual mechanisms of exploitation have been adapted over time. During the 1990s, the WTO was created out of the GATT to join the World Bank and the IMF in a triad intended to consolidate permanent rule by the Northern bloc, especially according to the dictates of the US. Mike Moore, the White House's chosen man to head the WTO, is due to step down as Director General later this year after having worked hard to carry out his master's mandate. As noted above, NZ and its leadership have been to the fore in the West's ongoing attack on the Third World. But Third World resistance has grown as frustration mounts over the repressive economic policies being forced on poor countries in what is viewed in some quarters as a new wave of recolonisation (see e.g. "Recolonization: GATT, the Uruguay Round & the Third World" by C Raghavan, Zed Books, 1990).

It is certainly not the first time that NZ has starred in a strategy aimed at thwarting the South. For instance, Edmund Dell, British Secretary of State for Trade, 1976-78, has told how, at a 1978 Commonwealth Conference on commodity issues, he was most grateful for support from the NZ Ambassador to Rome in opposing a bid by developing countries for justice in trade (International Affairs, vol. 63, no. 1, Winter 86/87, p36). Later on, Mike Moore's efforts were keenly appreciated by the US government right from the early stages of the GATT Uruguay Round in the 1980s. Former American Ambassador to NZ, Paul Cleveland, praised NZ's part in helping push Third World nations to "economic reform" (Christchurch Star, 3/10/88). He said that "NZ has a very definite role" and an influence beyond what its size might suggest (ibid.). Moore has certainly earned his Stars and Stripes.

"Trade and the Poor" examines the goals and hopes for the NIEO as originally enunciated in the early 1970s and looks at the situation and prospects moving into the 21st Century. In the review of Madeley's "Big Business, Poor Peoples", we considered certain major difficulties for developing countries in trading commodities like coffee and sugar. The foundation of the original NIEO was, in fact, to have been a set of improved commodity agreements for a number of major goods produced by these countries, e.g. coffee, sugar, cocoa, copper and tin. But, of course, such a proposal was not only a threat to the traditional reliance of Western states on cheap raw materials from the South but a challenge to the market forces exerted by TNCs. When "it gradually became clear later in the 1970s that the oil price shock had given rise to something of a false alarm", and that the South lacked the bargaining power to make a difference, the West "lost interest in the new order. They have ignored the 1974 NIEO charter ever since" ("TP", p15). While structural changes in international relations along these lines could not automatically guarantee improvements in the lives of many of the poor, such change would yet greatly improve conditions for coordinated work to mitigate world problems.

Madeley refers to how terms of trade fell painfully for the Third World throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, the era when the GATT Uruguay Round got going and was still in negotiation. He points out how: "Coffee-producing countries, for example, were receiving around UK500 pounds a tonne for the exported raw coffee beans in April 1992, only a small fraction more than in April 1975. But over the same period the prices of some imports of agricultural machinery have risen fivefold. In 1975, African farmers could have bought a basic tractor for around eight tonnes of their coffee; in 1992, it would cost them around 40 tonnes" (ibid., p8).

When the GATT Uruguay Round was finalised in 1994 and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) emerged on to the world scene, official projections from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the rich nations' club, indicated that Africa would generally lose out from a deal basically decided by the US and European Union (EU). In particular, rising prices for essential food commodities like wheat and corn would have to be paid by African consumers whereas, at the same time, coffee and cocoa prices would drop, taking income out of the hands of African producers. Overall, according to the OECD: "Sub-Saharan African countries were expected to lose nearly US$3 billion a year from the changes" ("BBPP", p38). Various other commodities are involved. For instance, as with coffee and cocoa, rich country antagonism to any market intervention that helps protect and support tropical sugar growers has similarly undermined conditions for these people. "The long term prospects for sugar prices are hardly good; governments of sugar cane producing countries cannot rely on the crop fetching enough to cover its cost of production" ("TP", p40). Mike and his mates in Wellington, Washington, London, Brussels, Geneva and elsewhere sure know how to screw poor agricultural producers in the Third World in aid of Western Big Business (see "BBPP" review above). Fittingly enough, here in NZ, newspaper editorial writers regard Mike with warm affection, propaganda and praise. For instance, Moore really is supporting "the claims of the underprivileged countries" according to Christchurch Star editor, Mike Fletcher - and so the public relations rubbish mill spins on.

Fluctuating and falling commodity prices can partially instigate, or at the very least aggravate social and ethnic tensions in Third World countries. Ironically, as it so happened, international coffee prices were to spike again in the latter part of 1994. Frosts, droughts and other problems of nature can induce shortages from time to time. However, prices were then to soon resume their downward trend. Despite the fact that the International Coffee Agreement (ICA) certainly helped coffee producers get a better return during the years it was in operation (in fact, it was the best of such Agreements in doing so - hence the antagonism of the NZ Treasury), coffee prices have also been marked by much instability with lack of cooperation between producer and consumer members of the Agreement being one of the crucial destabilising factors. Indeed, if cooperation had been positive other problems could have been overcome or managed constructively.

As Madeley records in "Trade and the Poor", coffee producing Third World nations were so badly hurt by the price problem in the early 1990s that, in September 1993, 40 producing countries united in forming the Association of Coffee Producing Countries. In fact, leading nations jointly withdrew some supplies from the export market. Like Rwanda, a number of African states depend to a substantial degree on coffee for part of their export returns, sometimes adding considerably to social strains. As well, in other regions, countries like Colombia which are heavily reliant on coffee exports have continued to experience the deleterious effects of this trade, similarly intensifying socio-economic conflicts. In Colombia's case, that includes widespread violence. Among the consequences, Colombia has seen coca growing and so cocaine production and its trade flourish as alternatives to coffee, while new alternative ventures into non-traditional export crops like cut flowers have led to "poverty wages, child labour, pesticide poisoning and severe health problems" ("BBPP", p68). US special forces have long been engaged in a campaign to crush Colombia's guerrilla movements.

In 2002, under the WTO umbrella, agricultural trade negotiations are being prodded along by the US and the Cairns Group, of which NZ is a member, but despite the best efforts of Mike Moore and his mates further resistance has set in from developing countries. A recent report from an observer in the NGO, Action Aid, picked out certain highlights from the Special Sessions of the Agriculture Committee of the WTO in February 2002. One discussion paper from a group of developing countries (Dominican Republic, Kenya, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Cuba, Honduras and Zimbabwe) argued "the need for greater flexibility for developing countries in adopting domestic agricultural policies to ensure improved productivity, higher income levels and reduced vulnerability to price fluctuations" (Action Aid report). As well: "The African Group noted the continuing commodity dependence of developing countries, long term price decline of commodities and the marginalisation of African countries in world commodity trade. It noted that the issue of commodities was at the centre of the original framework of a rule-based world trading system" (ibid.). Meantime, a group of small island developing states "pointed out that liberalisation has had negative effects on the agricultural sectors in most" such countries (ibid.). However, the US and EU opposed any suggestion of members "entering into commodity arrangements, which had failed in the past" (ibid.). Likewise, NZ opposed any really meaningful consideration of the development needs of Third World countries.

If the US's leading trade theorist, Paul Krugman ("the most celebrated economist of his generation" according to the Economist), has his own individual angle on globalisation he is still very conventional in what he sees as the hope globalisation can bring for developing countries. He puts it like this: "You may say that the wretched of the Earth should not be forced to serve as hewers of wood, drawers of water, and sewers of sneakers for the affluent. But what is the alternative?…there isn't the slightest prospect of significant aid materialising . . .And as long as you have no realistic alternative to industrialisation based on low wages, to oppose it means that you are willing to deny desperately poor people the best chance they have of progress . . ." ("The Accidental Theorist and other Dispatches from the Dismal Science", WW Norton & Co., 1998, p85). Yet, after reviewing the options available to the South, John Madeley well warns that "trade should be one part of development policy rather than the dominant part. Overexposure to an international system which is difficult for them to control has clear dangers for developing countries . . ." ("TP", p176).

Krugman, in a special "Note on Globalisation", gives a most revealing "favourite concrete example of the driving forces behind globalisation . . . [i.e.] the recent and rapid rise of Zimbabwe's vegetable exports" ("The Accidental Theorist", p85). This particular example is highly topical given all the attention focused on Zimbabwe these days. Indeed, it is well worth looking at the Zimbabwean experience in some detail because it serves to illustrate Madeley's thesis. Expanding on his example, economist Paul Krugman points to "truck farmers near Harare" who have got into the business of "supplying fresh vegetables to London markets" (ibid.). He argues that the good points of this enterprise include "appropriate technology" and the creation of badly needed jobs, even if low paid. Significantly enough, Krugman adds that: "And, oh yes, the workers are black . . . but the farmers who employ them are white colonial settlers who have chosen to stay on under the new regime" (ibid., p86).

In the most general sense, this kind of development is the very sort that the US NGO, the Institute for Food and Development Policy (IFDP, also known as Food First), along with other critics, has branded as being very detrimental to local people and food security requirements. In a situation where there is hunger and poverty, food is being exported to consumers overseas who are already more than well supplied. IFDP has had a splendid track record over many years, documenting the problems with export-led agricultural development in developing countries, and advocating alternatives (see Foreign Control Watchdog 95, December 2000, pp73-78, for some discussion of issues involved). "Less food grown locally, because of a switch to export crops, could mean higher food prices in local markets, which in turn could lead to hardship and hunger for poorer people in urban areas" ("TP", p51). From his own perspective, Madeley sees the issue as "one of striking a balance between export and food crops which enables a satisfactory return to be earned from the exports while achieving a reasonable level of self-sufficiency" (ibid.).

In light of the current situation and strife in Zimbabwe, Krugman's "favourite concrete example" is surely a most ironic one for supposedly illustrating the benefits of globalisation. Whatever the ruthless power plays of President Mugabe and the deplorable activities that have been happening in Zimbabwe, Britain engineered, in 1979, the Lancaster House Agreement, a racial settlement obviously charged with future conflict, an arrangement dead set to endanger hopes for justice and democracy. "The year of Independence, 1980, found 6,000 white farmers, most of whom had fought tooth and nail to prevent Rhodesia becoming Zimbabwe, owning 42% of the country", including the best land ("Zimbabwe: A Land Divided" by R Palmer & I Birch, Oxfam, 1992, p23). Another colonial legacy is coming to grim fruition. Corrupt politicians like Mugabe can always manipulate such situations for their own ends.

In the name evidently of "kith and kin" (if today unspoken), the NZ government is now welcoming substantially increased numbers of white refugees from Zimbabwe. There certainly should be international cooperation in helping Zimbabwe resolve its problems but the laager-like mentality which is ever present in the West, now greatly heightened since the events of September 11, 2001, goes hand in hand with the protection and extension of the global reach of empire. In this connection, a wider Western aim is no doubt to lever in a more pliable government, given Zimbabwe's mineral wealth and its very strategic geopolitical position on the African continent. Hence the unusually lavish media coverage of an African country. Since 1979 Mugabe's policies in practice were never really radical in challenging Western interests until his personal position was at stake. However, today, his strong anti-colonial rhetoric disturbs the imperial powers while his military intervention in the Congo's troubles has become more than just an irritant. Cynical Western leaders in the form of President Bush and Tony Blair, with their acolytes in tow like Helen Clark, can very selectively pontificate about democracy and human rights even while their neo-liberal policies continue to ravage the African continent, helping to undermine these very values. None of this gets serious consideration in the mainstream media, of course.

With a rapidly growing black population, Zimbabwe's problems are threatening to become intractable. Britain has long dragged its feet on facilitating proper land reform in Zimbabwe despite the expectations aroused. After the expiry of the Lancaster House Agreement constraints on land transfer, the Mugabe government did make some moves in the early 1990s in this direction, triggering strong Western negativity. At the same time, governmental supports came under siege. Madeley remarks that the IMF-prescribed "Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) has been called by the country's poor the 'Extended Suffering for African People's Programme'" ("TP", p120). This programme began in 1991, impacting heavily on the urban poor and, pertinently enough, it is in the urban areas in 2002 where opposition is strongest to the Mugabe regime.

Agriculture has also been hit very hard by liberalisation. In 1990-91, IMF and World Bank policies even pressured the Zimbabwean government to dismantle its food security provisions, putting the country's people at risk by selling off "uneconomic" State-run institutions, or reducing investment in them. "Consequently, the Grain Marketing Board was obliged to sell off its huge stockpile of maize, and to stop building grain silos in outlying areas. As a result, one year later, Zimbabwe found itself having to import, at enormous cost, the equivalent of what it had recently stockpiled: nearly two million tonnes" ("Zimbabwe: A Land Divided", p45). This neo-liberal attack on the Grain Marketing Board goes hand in hand with attacks on producer boards in Aotearoa/NZ and elsewhere. Even before the current troubles, some Zimbabwean export crops like sugar were looking very problematic for the future with the prospect of chronic "price instability" ("TP", p139). Such is the international free market in operation.

John Madeley has some very illuminating observations on the Zimbabwean experience in "Hungry for Trade: How the Poor Pay for Free Trade" ("HFT"). Trade and domestic liberalisation under the ESAP have adversely affected Zimbabwean agriculture in a number of ways. Since ESAP was instituted there has been a huge decline in living standards. "While corruption, cronyism and mismanagement of the economy are partly responsible, it was ESAP that started the rot . . . Government support for farmers has been drastically reduced - which in turn has affected food output" ("HFT", p84). Subsidies have been slashed. By 1999 Zimbabwe had become a net importer of maize. A study by the Catholic Institute for International Relations (CIIR) found that ESAP had had "an overall negative impact on the poor and very poor smallholders in Zimbabwe" ("Trade Liberalisation and Household Food Security: A Study from Zimbabwe" by M Chisvo, CIIR, March 2000; quoted in "HFT", p86). Farmers have even "been encouraged to replace maize with tobacco" ("HFT", p58).

"For many Zimbabweans, there is an unpalatable irony in the fact that subsidies for farmers in the US and Europe are acceptable to the IMF and World Bank, but similar subsidies are apparently inappropriate for farmers in Zimbabwe and elsewhere in Africa" ("Zimbabwe: A Land Divided", p45). Now the WTO's policies are set to further erode food security provisions. The irony goes even deeper in that Zimbabwe has also served as a fine example of how "farm supports can play an important role in helping food-deficit countries to increase food output and self-sufficiency. The government of Zimbabwe . . . increased the farmgate price of maize by 80% between 1979 and 1981 and production tripled in the following five years" ("TP", p136; "Zimbabwe: A Land Divided", p23). Black farmers were responsible for this boost in production.

Indeed, the ironies are even further compounded with a World Bank report acknowledging "the Zimbabwean experience shows that if . . .supportive agricultural services are available, smallholders will respond with increased production" ("TP", ibid.). Putting this again in its wider context, Madeley refers to OECD/World Bank projections, cited above, indicating that the GATT/WTO programme means "that most of Africa stands to lose" (ibid., p135). The World Bank/IMF/WTO assault on the Zimbabwean Grain Marketing Board is symptomatic of the neo-liberal programme driven by TNC market forces to eventually eliminate meaningful support for small and medium farmers worldwide. In Zimbabwe, while Mugabe is accused of using food as a political weapon through a "Government reimposed . . monopoly on the purchase and sale of maize, wheat, and other staples" (Press, 13/3/02), the background to food shortages and economic troubles there is a lot more complicated than most of the Western media would like to recognise. It is no coincidence that the Western leaders of the war on Afghanistan are now driving the Commonwealth apart along the lines of rich versus poor, "white" versus "coloured".

A basic theme is the institutionalised hypocrisy of the West which helped produce "the horrifying atrocities of September 11", 2001 ("S11", pp11/12). The long practice of Western terrorism, refined in such episodes as the CIA/contra war on Nicaragua and American sponsorship of Turkey's repression of its Kurdish minority, has finally elicited a similar terrorist attack on symbols of American power. Not only that but the US in particular actually aided the Muslim political extremism which eventuated in the New York and Washington attacks. Through recruitment of many thousands of foreign "Islamic fundamentalists" to join the resistance to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other US agencies encouraged a force which would later rebound on them (ibid., p82).

As the US geared up for its own war on Afghanistan following September 11, there was the usual orchestration of the media - in this case to portray the Taliban regime as bad enough to fully deserve a jolly good bombing. One of the propaganda stories circulating was that the Taliban had not really stopped the growing of opium and the drug trade at all (e.g. One News, TVNZ, 3/10/01). Yet the Tajik war lords of the US-backed Northern Alliance have served as a major channel for the flow of drugs to the West and this is now "likely to increase" (see "S11", pp43 & 108). Likewise, punishments such as amputation, lashings, and stoning to death are to be maintained (Press, 14/1/02). While the ousted Taliban regime was certainly guilty of atrocities, the ruling Northern Alliance had also had a horrendous record when formerly in power, in the early 1990s.

The concept of "globalisation" gets a bit messy in "September 11". While Chomsky is a committed opponent of globalisation, he dismisses its relevance in application to the events of September 11 and the bin Laden terrorist network, or whoever were the actual perpetrators of the atrocities in New York and Washington. There seem to be several reasons for this. One is that the American Administration uses the grossly spurious argument that the terrorists hate the "civilised" values of freedom, democracy, human rights, etc. that the US claims to represent. This can be used to suggest that terrorism carried out by Muslim fundamentalist extremists is a response to cultural globalisation, the spread of Western values. But Chomsky sees this contention as a failure to understand the very specific causes of such terrorism. These specific causes comprise: the historical encouragement of Muslim religious fundamentalism by Western agencies as alternatives to socialist political movements; support for Israel over the Palestinians; establishment of a US military presence in Saudi Arabia; support for repressive regimes in the Middle East; sanctions against Iraq; and so on.

Chomsky gives lots of insights. Ironically, so much radical fundamentalism like the Taliban regime has in fact its roots in the established form promoted by Saudi Arabia. Then there is the boast of President Carter's National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, "that in mid-1979 he had instigated secret support for Mujahidin fighting against the government of Afghanistan in an effort to draw the Russians into what he called an 'Afghan trap'", designed to be the Soviet Union's Vietnam (ibid., p82). Brzezinski is still a key strategist in the US Administration.

In February 2002, the CIA was warning that "the seeds are present for renewed civil war in Afghanistan, as thousands of ethnic Pashtuns" fled hunger, drought and violence in the north (Press, 23/2/02). It was the CIA which stirred up risings against the Taliban regime, along with open US backing of the Northern Alliance. Along with all the disruption to relief/aid operations, the continuing violence and instability mean further suffering for the Afghan people. Meantime, of course, the "trans-Afghan gas pipeline" project has been revived even as the war goes on (Press, 11/2/02).