globalisation
a 400% increase in imports
Submitted by antarchi on April 21, 2009 - 14:50The entire economy of India was handed over to US in a secret deal to remove import restrictions on 714 items by 1st April 2000 and 715 items by 1st April 2001.
Artificially cheap subsidized products like soya oil started to flood the market. Imports of soyabean oil have increased from 2,36,000 tonnes in 1997-98 to 8,00,000 in 1998-99...
The mustard produced by our farmers which was selling at Rs. 2,000/- per quintal in 1999, is today not even selling for Rs. 900 per quintal. The production of mustard seeds has fallen by 65% and over 60% small oil mills and ghanis have been closed down, rendering lakhs of people unemployed.
As a result of unfair trading practices legalized by the WTO, India's agricultural imports have gone up from Rs. 50,000 million in 1995 to over Rs. 200,000 million in 1999-2000, a 400% increase in imports.
pepsi profits while indians starve
Submitted by antarchi on April 21, 2009 - 12:49It is the trading giants like Pepsi and Cargill who have benefited from withdrawal of food subsidies to the poor and redirection of subsidies for exports. Pepsi is exporting 100,000 tonnes of rice from India during 2002 with Rs. 12.2 million profits, while people in India face starvation. Cargill has exported 1m.t. tonnes of wheat during the past year, and plans to procure 20,000 m.t. during the 2002 harvest. Trade liberalization is a recipe for starving the poor to feed the corporations.
While the World Bank and IMF remove subsidies from food reaching the poor, they encourage subsidies to grain giants like Cargill and Pepsi for exporting food grain.
LUNACIES OF THE MARKET
Submitted by antarchi on July 24, 2007 - 00:05'Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, is often cited as arguing for the “invisible hand” and free markets: firms, in the pursuit of profits, are led, as if by an invisible hand, to do what is best for the world. But unlike his followers, Adam Smith was aware of some of the limitations of free markets, and research since then has further clarified why free markets, by themselves, often do not lead to what is best. As I put it in my new book, Making Globalization Work, the reason that the invisible hand often seems invisible is that it is often not there.'
Joseph Stiglitz, Making Globalisation Work
A selection of the inanities, insanities and inconsistencies that the invisible hand - there or not there - manages to conjure out of thin air. The Believers live the madness, certain that the hand knows best, certain it will lead us into sanity (or else believing this is sanity).
a privilege to be exploited
Submitted by antarchi on June 22, 2008 - 11:51Today it is almost a privilege to be exploited. The real problem is that globalisation takes the best and leaves the rest. Of course it exploits, but more than that, it excludes. We must face such facts however much we may deplore them. There are huge regions in which the drivers of globalisation take little or no interest. Present day globalisation is not interested either in the hundreds of millions of people who do not produce within the market system and consume so little that they scarcely register.
I accuse Shell of racism
Submitted by antarchi on November 4, 2007 - 15:15I accuse Shell and Chevron of practising racism against the Ogoni people because they do in Ogoni what they do not do in other parts of the world where they prospect for oil. I accuse the oil companies of encouraging genocide against the Ogoni people... The profits from oil come to Britain because it is their technology that is keeping Nigerian oil going. So they have a moral responsibility to intervene... My mission has been to inform the West of the truth of what is happening in Nigeria, which has been hidden from them. I believe if people knew they’d do something about it and stop this robbery and murder that is going on in broad daylight.
we still have slave traders
Submitted by antarchi on July 26, 2007 - 04:23Today, we still have slave traders. They no longer find it necessary to march into the forests of Africa looking for prime specimens who will bring top dollar on the auction blocks in Charleston. Cartagena, and Havana. They simply recruit desperate people and build a factory to produce the jackets, blue jeans, tennis shoes, automobile parts, computer components, and thousands of other items they can sell in the markets of their choosing...
about his meeting with Omar Torrijos (quoted in Confessions of an economic hitman)
