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April 9-13, 2001 - Global Policy Forum - Email 'Listserv' News
GPF List-Serv
April 9-13, 2001Greetings from GPF!
Britain in the Pyre's Glow
Across the land in Britain, flaming pyres cast a macabre glow, recalling the Satanic Mills of early industrialism. The government of Prime Minister Tony Blair has ordered the immolation of hundreds of thousands of cattle in a desperate effort to stamp out a hoof and mouth epidemic, while defending the rules of industrial, export-oriented agriculture. In eerie coincidence, London's most commented art exhibition has featured the works of William Blake, the early nineteenth century radical-mystic artist and poet, whose apocalyptic vision saw a fiery heavenly justice, punishing the greed and violence of his times.
Today's British public suffers woes of Biblical proportions - and not only the roasting of the herds, shattering patriotic dreams of roast beef dinners and bucolic landscapes - as Ignacio Ramonet points out in this month's Le Monde Diplomatique. The public has also been traumatized by floods, electricity failures, train wrecks and the near-quarantine of a countryside in the grip of hoof-and-mouth as well as mad cow disease. Over twenty years of neoliberalism, privatization and deregulation have caused many of these disasters, while piling up fortunes in London's fabulous financial quarter, where bankers stash the fortunes of dictators and speculators make a killing while bringing ruin to foreign lands. No wonder that crowds flocked to see Blake's fierce and emotional vision of apocalypse.
Ever since Margaret Thatcher plunged Britain into the world's first full-fledged neoliberal experiment, extolling the wonders of the unfettered market and the wisdom of "wealth-creation," crises have been waiting to happen. After all, the Thatcher government eliminated the national network of veterinarians in a fit of deregulatory zeal and neo-liberal budget slashing. The Thatcherites also gave encouragement to unchecked industrial production techniques in the agricultural sector. In 1991, to promote exports and save on costs, the British government ended cattle vaccination. It also eased rules for cattle feed production, in ways that lowered barriers to the spread of disease.
The train wrecks can likewise be traced to a keystone of neo-liberalism, the privatization of the British railways. Slumping quality of health care, soaring child poverty, dilapidation of the great universities, all signal the decline and fall of neoliberal Britain, just as the tumbling stock market brings the hubris of the stock jobbers back to earth.
Today, though British woes mount, the Blake exhibition has moved on to New York. Perhaps the California electricity crisis, the thuggery of Washington, dot-com melt-downs and the steady slide on Wall Street will inspire the New York glitterati to see their own apocalypse in Blake's mystical mirror.
Security Council Jottings
The notorious RUF rebellion of Sierra Leone may finally be losing steam. This past week, Deputy Secretary General Louise Fréchette traveled to the country and won RUF agreement to cooperate with UN peacekeepers. Remarkably, peacekeeping forces have now started to deploy in the RUF-held diamond areas. Meanwhile, RUF's sponsor, Liberian President Charles Taylor, has mobilized 15,000 veterans of the Liberian civil war, allegedly to "counter border attacks from Guinea-based guerillas" but more likely to defend his own grip on power in Monrovia.
West African leaders met in Abidjan to discuss the regional conflict in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. Because Charles Taylor attened, the presidents of Sierra Leone and Guinea stayed away. Nevertheless, the West African grouping decided to establish a "monitoring mechanism" to head off the sanctions threatened by the Security Council and to send a "verification mission" to check on Taylor's compliance with the Security Council resolution.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the political landscape has changed since Joseph Kabila took power. Now that foreign troops have withdrawn and Kabila has dismissed corrupt ministers, the young president appears stronger than many originally thought. One especially promising sign in DRC -- the Congolese opposition in exile is coming back to take part of an inter-Congolese dialogue.
As war wanes, businesses rush in to stake claims to the rich Congolese mineral deposits that have been controlled by rebesl and foreign armies. But all is not firmly under the control of Kinshasa. Rebels based in Goma, for instance, recently announced a new policy for the lucrative "col-tan" trade, ending the export monopoly enjoyed by the Great Lakes Mining Company. At the same time, though, American Mineral Fields, a company traded on the Toronto stock exchange, has announced that Kinshasa has approved terms for a $300 million dollar copper-cobalt project, the largest direct investment since the fall of Mobutu.
Finally, at UN headquarters in New York, delegates were puzzled about an article in the New York Times by veteran correspondent Barbara Crossette announcing that the Russians and French intended to propose sanctions against Pakistan because of its support for the Taliban of Afghanistan. This seemed a very unlikely proposal to bring to the Security Council. Indeed, Russia and France both strongly denied the story. Many observers wondered why Crossette went to press with this story and where she got her information.
Tobin Tax Touted
We have posted an excellent paper by Peter Wahl and Peter Waldow on the Tobin tax called "Currency Transaction Tax - a Concept with a Future." The paper presents the case for the tax with great clarity and persuasiveness. We were especially interested to read the authors' estimates of the size of profits from foreign exchange trading. The $1.5 trillion daily market (more than $400 trillion per year) apparently produces profits in the order of $100 billion per year for banks, hedge funds and other traders. No wonder, then, that the proposal has met with such fierce resistance! We share the authors' view, though, that the movement in favor of this tax, though "hard and long" will be "successful in the end."
Bankers' Holiday
During a recent trip to Mali and Tanzania, World Bank President James Wolfensohn and IMF Managing Director Horst Koehler, talked often of the importance of strengthened links between governments and the governed. However, their own efforts to listen to civil society were tellingly minimal. They cut short a scheduled meeting with Tanzanian groups so that they could leave for a trip to the Ngorongoro Crater tourist and wildlife park.
Moreover, African NGOs were critical of the World Bank's alleged commitment to poverty reduction and the quality of governance in Africa. The NGOs said that the Bank's priorities remain the same -- creating favorable conditions for foreign investment. Tanzanian and Malian NGO networks emphasized the lack of democracy in their countries and the high social costs of privatizing basic services.
Now the new links for this week…..
