#48, August 9, 2000
"Newspeak" protected the tyranny of 1984's Big
Brother by hiding the horrible behind a pretty words. The state propaganda
agency was the Ministry of Truth; the torturers of the secret police worked in
the Ministry of Love.
Today, the most threatening piece of newspeak is
"globalism." The term supports that warm/fuzzy one-world sentiment of
the old commercial, "I'd like to teach the world to sing, in perfect
harmony. I'd like to buy the world a coke…once trade is truly free" (I
added that last part.)
But globalism, as pursued by the World Trade Organization
(WTO), is more truthfully described as "corporate imperialism." We
know empires as organizations that forcefully expand into new territories,
gaining wealth at the expense of the great majority of their colonists. Today's
trans-national corporations are filling that role. They use their economic
muscle, along with military support from host nations like the US, to pursue
"free trade," another fine example of newspeak. Free trade really
means free from national or local restrictions designed to protect local self-reliance,
quality of life, and environmental health. Child and prison labor, hazardous
workplaces, habitat loss, toxic waste production, genetically engineered
materials-- none of these can be used by governments to justify import
restrictions. WTO rules would have squashed the anti-apartheid boycott against
South Africa, and threaten the Kyoto Accord governing the reduction of
greenhouse gasses.
When the US attempted to block imports of shrimp caught in
the same nets that kill 150,000 sea turtles annually, the WTO called the block
"arbitrary and unjustified." The WTO's three judge panels, who lack
environmental and social credentials and deliberate in secret, have
consistently ruled for business, against the environment.
So far, globalism's primary result has been shifting wealth
from poor to rich. Since 1970, the gap between the top and bottom twenty
percent has doubled. 86% of the world's goods now go to the top 20%, the bottom
20% get 1%. The International Monetary Fund and World Bank, two more
instruments of globalization, use their tremendous capital to pressure
countries into "structural adjustment" (a free market shock therapy)
which benefit the trans-nat corporate owners and the fortunates in the colony
nation, but shreds the economic safety net. Tanzania, held up as an example of
the prosperity generated by this approach, now has a third of its citizens
unable to afford the most basic needs. Says the director of the Institute for
Development Studies in Tanzania's capital, "A small number of people are doing
very well indeed, but the vast majority are suffering more than ever. There are
wonderful things in the shops now, but who can afford to buy them?"
Last Autumn, forty thousand demonstrators from a world-wide
range of environmental, labor, and human rights groups gathered in Seattle to
shine a light of accountability on the WTO. These demonstrators sought to
prevent the non-elected WTO delegates from adopting new rules that could, among
other things, lead to corporate ownership of all water supplies and all genetic
material.
Police wearing 70 pounds of high tech equipment marched into
the non-violent, tear-gassed demonstrators, spearing batons into their guts.
When the demonstrators sat down with arms locked, police methodically jerked
backed their heads and pepper sprayed their eyes. They used a spray thousand
times hotter than the jalapeno pepper, creating a sensation described by a
spray vendor's website "as if two red-hot pieces of steel were grinding
into my eyes."
There is something awfully metaphoric about a well-informed
and peaceful resistance being gassed, beaten, and blinded. It's as if all of
the American people are to remain blind to the work of corporate imperialism.
If you remember the Seattle demonstration only for traffic jams and the windows
smashed by a few dozen anarchists and vandals, that could reflect the chilling
fact that six companies run by six men control the majority of the news we now
get from newspapers, television, radio and the Internet.
There are non-imperialist ways to support global trade and
development, but you won't hear about them from the corporate-sponsored Bush
and Gore campaigns. If there was one reason to get Ralph Nader into the
presidential debates, this is it.