Keith Hudson wrote:
> What I was writing about are people, such as Prof McMurty, who suffer from
> what is I think is called "proxima vu" (the opposite of "deja vu") -- which
> means that the truth is just around the corner.
Perhaps it's just that people such as Prof McMurtry recognize the "deja vu"
in the present developments and from this extrapolate to future developments
-- an ability that the short-term thinkers of neoliberalism lack...
> The US, EC and Japan have enormous tariffs against food
> imports from developing countries when these are about the only goods they
> can offer at the present time.
Isn't it perverse that the developing countries --where hunger is common--
should export *food* to the overfed developed countries ? Btw, this insanity
is already going on -- e.g. the EU is importing annually about 30 million
tons (66,000,000,000 pounds) of animal feed from developing countries !
According to a German nutrition professor, this amount could nourish
360 million people in the developing countries where this food is actually
grown, and where millions are starving. Instead, it feeds EU cattle
(which then gets burned for BSE or FMD, or has to be dumped as surplus,
or ends up increasing cardiovascular diseases in overfed Europeans).
This is yet another example of the perverse insanity of "Free" Trade,
which will only get worse with WTO's "progress".
And while I'm at it, some comments on an earlier posting in this thread:
On Thu, 22 Nov 2001, Keith Hudson wrote:
> The WTO is a good example of the checks and balances I mentioned in my last
> message. Although it is a "democratic" organisation in that its rules have
> to be established by all its member governments (every government however
> small has a veto)
It's good that Keith puts "democratic" between ""s, but I'm afraid the WTO
doesn't deserve this label even if put between ""s. After all, "one country
one vote" (as opposed to "one person one vote") isn't democratic, especially
when the single vote for a country doesn't even represent public majority
in that country -- neither for the decisions in WTO, nor even for the
country's joining of the WTO in the first place.
> The WTO is a highly imperfect organisation but its aims are worthy ones. If
> critics (such as Prof John McMurtry) can think of a better method of
> increasing prosperity all round, particularly for the poorer countries,
> then they ought to put forward constructive and detailed proposals instead
> of writing diatribes.
How about this better method: Create more equality *within* the countries.
And yes, this applies particularly to the poorer countries, where inequality
is even bigger than in most developed countries ! Their wealthy elites
of course agree to the WTO because they know that they themselves will
benefit -- at the cost of the poor/starving majority of their countries.
It's just not true that WTO-critics have no alternatives to offer. It's
the neoliberals who claim that "TINA" ("there is no alternative") to their
own one-size-fits-all approach!
> the World Bank and the IMF have not been notably successful so far. But
> they, and the WTO, were established with the best of motives
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, yup.
> In his article, Prof John McMurtry, all too easily uses terms like
> "hierarchy" in the context of the IMF, World Bank and WTO. But there are
> far nastier forms of hierarchy in the world, such as those we have been
> recently glimpsing in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
But the latter have been installed by the corporate forces !
As the UK's newspaper The Guardian put it so well: (on 13-Sep-2001)
"It was the Americans, after all, who poured resources into the
1980s war against the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul, at a time
when girls could go to school and women to work. Bin Laden and his
mojahedin were armed and trained by the CIA and MI6, as Afghanistan
was turned into a wasteland".
So much for the rhetoric about the "civilized West"...
Chris
