From: MichaelP <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "unlikely.suspects": ; Subject: GUARDIAN on bananas: It's as if the MAI never went away. Of course we know it never went away - one of the monster's heads was removed only to be replaced by another, (or, more likely, by, several). But what's this editorial clarifies is that the free trade issue has nothing to do with the consumer - allowing the "market" freedom to make decisions can't possibly work when the choice of what decisions to make is restricted by the global corporations. Cheers MichaelP ======================== GUARDIAN Friday March 5, 1999 The banana dispute is hotting up nicely. Philip Lader, the US ambassador to London, has been summoned for the second time in two days to explain his country's decision to impose 100 per cent export duties on a range of European products, this time at the Foreign Office. He also has the dubious honour of being the first ambassador to be summoned to the Department of Trade and Industry for a dressing-down from Stephen Byers. Of course, for 'dressing-down', read 'cosy chat' - after all, Tony is not about to fall out with Bill over a few bananas. This dispute has the predictability of well-worn LP: soft words will be spoken, a compromise will be reached behind oak-panelled doors and the real issue will be left obscured and ignored by all but a hard-core band of economists and protestors. And the real issue behind all this? It's not the future of the Scottish cashmere sweater industry or even the fate of the Caribbean islands reliant on banana exports which are at stake. It's about nothing less than the right of governments to make their own decisions. In fact, the banana debate is starting to resemble another recent controversy: the row over genetically modified food. We're not talking about food production here; this is a question of sheer economic might. It's called globalisation and it's what links bananas to soya burgers. The power of the big corporations has started to exceed that of the nation states whose borders they cross: over half of the world's largest economies are corporations, and the combined revenues of General Motors and Ford exceed the combined Gross Domestic Product of all of Sub-Saharan Africa. It means that a company such as Monsanto - the corporation behind much of the genetic modification of food - can afford to muscle its product onto world markets, irrespective of whether consumers like it or not. And a banana producer, Chiquita, whose $500,000 donation to the Democrats came only 24 hours before the US decision, can afford to do the same. It came to the fore last year when the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development tried to secretly negotiate the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), which would have allowed corporations to forcefully open all sectors of a nation's economy to the world market. At the time Renato Ruggerio, the romantically named Director General of the World Trade Organisation, declared: "We are writing the constitution of a single global economy." It didn't quite happen - the negotiations were scuppered by world-wide protests (linked by the Web) and the reluctance of some European governments to accept its conditions. Now it's as if the MAI never went away. Money talks even louder than governments, all too easily ignored by corporations keen to maximise profits. So it's not just a load of bananas after all. ========= ** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. ** -- For MAI-not (un)subscription information, posting guidelines and links to other MAI sites please see http://mai.flora.org/
