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OfflinePsilocybeingzz
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Registered: 12/15/02
Posts: 14,463
Loc: International waters
Last seen: 11 years, 4 months
Corporate Globalization Fact Sheet
    #2071417 - 11/04/03 09:32 PM (20 years, 4 months ago)

Corporate Globalization Fact Sheet

CorpWatch
March 22, 2001



Global Reach
Fifty-one of the world's top 100 economies are corporations.

Royal Dutch Shell's revenues are greater than Venezuela's Gross Domestic Product. Using this measurement, WalMart is bigger than Indonesia. General Motors is roughly the same size as Ireland, New Zealand and Hungary combined.

There are 63,000 transnational corporations worldwide, with 690,000 foreign affiliates.

Three quarters of all transnational corporations are based in North America, Western Europe and Japan.

Ninety-nine of the 100 largest transnational corporations are from the industrialized countries.



WTO and Global Trade: Who Benefits?
Since it was created in 1995, the WTO has ruled that every environmental policy it has reviewed is an illegal trade barrier that must be eliminated or changed. With one exception, the WTO also has ruled against every health or food safety law it has reviewed.

Nations whose laws were declared trade barriers by the WTO-or that were merely threatened with WTO action-have eliminated or watered down their policies to meet WTO requirements.

Supposedly each of the WTO's 134 member countries have an equal say in governance. In practice, decision-making is dominated by the "Quad": USA; European Union; Japan and Canada.

Each member of the Quad represents its corporations' interests at the WTO. These corporations are often directly involved in writing and shaping WTO rules. In the U.S. this is achieved through official "Trade Advisory Committees" which are dominated by the private sector.

For instance, the US International Trade Administration's Energy Advisory Committee is made up exclusively of representatives of giant oil, mining, gas and utility corporations, including Texaco, Enron, Halliburton and Freeport-McMoran.

The top fifth of the world's people in the richest countries enjoy 82% of the expanding export trade and 68% of foreign investment-the bottom fifth, receive roughly 1%.

Women comprise 70 percent of the world's 1.3 billion absolute poor. Worldwide, they bear the brunt of economic and financial transition and crisis caused by market forces and globalization.



NAFTA & FTAA: Who Benefits?
Seventy-five percent of Mexico's population lives in poverty today, compared with 49 percent in 1981, before Mexico underwent reforms that paved the way for NAFTA-the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The number of Mexicans living in severe poverty (living on less than $2 a day) has grown by four million since NAFTA began in 1994.

NAFTA has generated booming industrial development but little investment in the environment. As a result, environmental pollution and related public health problems have increased on both sides of the US-Mexico border.

In the first four years of NAFTA, 15 wood product companies, including International Paper and Boisie Cascade, set up shop in Mexico, cutting some of North America's largest intact forests.

Hundreds of thousands of US jobs have shifted to Mexico under NAFTA. 260,000 U.S. workers have qualified for a special NAFTA retraining program. Especially hard hit are the apparel and electronics industries, major employers of women and people of color.

The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), currently being negotiated by 34 countries, is intended by its architects to be the most far-reaching trade agreement in history.

Although it is based on the model of NAFTA, the FTAA goes far beyond it in scope and power, potentially granting unequalled new rights to corporations to compete for and even challenge publicly funded government services, including health care, education, social security, culture and environmental protection.



The World Bank and IMF: Who Benefits?
In the 1980s and early 1990s, the International Monetary Fund imposed structural adjustment programs on more than 70 countries.

Structural adjustment policies have required 36 countries in sub-Saharan Africa-where more than half of the population lives in absolute poverty-to decrease domestic consumption and shift scarce resources into production of cash crops for export; state-owned companies and many state services have been privatized, and health and education expenditures have been cut and restructured.

The absolute number of people living in poverty rose in the 1990s in Eastern Europe, South Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and sub-Saharan Africa-all areas that came under the sway of adjustment programs.

Structural adjustment policies have elicited massive protests in countries as far flung as Ecuador, Zambia, the Philippines and Jamaica.

In 2000 a bipartisan Congressional panel-the Meltzer Commission-found that World Bank Group and IMF failures can be traced to "overlapping missions, ineffectiveness, corruption, and waste of resources, and failure to develop successful regional programs in agriculture, forestry, environment and health care," among other problems.

Each year, the World Bank awards some 40,000 contracts to private firms.

US Treasury Department calculates that for every US$1 the U.S. contributes to international development banks, US corporations receive more than double that amount in bank-financed procurement contracts.

The World Bank has an astounding 65-70 per cent failure rate of its projects in the poorest countries.



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Invisiblez@z.com
Libertarian
Registered: 10/13/02
Posts: 2,876
Loc: ATL
Re: Corporate Globalization Fact Sheet [Re: Psilocybeingzz]
    #2071443 - 11/04/03 09:39 PM (20 years, 4 months ago)

Quote:

Psilocybeingzz said:
Royal Dutch Shell's revenues are greater than Venezuela's Gross Domestic Product. Using this measurement, WalMart is bigger than Indonesia. General Motors is roughly the same size as Ireland, New Zealand and Hungary combined.




And? The problem is?
Quote:


There are 63,000 transnational corporations worldwide, with 690,000 foreign affiliates.

Three quarters of all transnational corporations are based in North America, Western Europe and Japan.

Ninety-nine of the 100 largest transnational corporations are from the industrialized countries.




You mean the most economically powerful and developed countries are the home to most large corporations? Shocking.


I might go through the rest sometime later, but for now I gotta get some sleep.


--------------------
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - C.S. Lewis

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniencies attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." - Thomas Jefferson

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InvisibleXlea321
Stranger
Registered: 02/25/01
Posts: 9,134
Re: Corporate Globalization Fact Sheet [Re: z@z.com]
    #2072066 - 11/05/03 01:27 AM (20 years, 4 months ago)

And? The problem is?

Read up on their history in Nigeria of environmental devastation, driving people from their homelands and ensuring anyone who protests is hanged.

You mean the most economically powerful and developed countries are the home to most large corporations?

Well it certainly gives a lie to the bollocks that "free trade" is helping poorer countries doesn't it. Clearly the countries it's helping are the richest.


--------------------
Don't worry, B. Caapi

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Invisiblecarbonhoots
old hand

Registered: 09/11/01
Posts: 1,351
Loc: BC Canada
Re: Corporate Globalization Fact Sheet [Re: Psilocybeingzz]
    #2072232 - 11/05/03 02:38 AM (20 years, 4 months ago)

Fascinating.

Someday democracy will chase down capital, and bend it to it's will. Do you believe that?


--------------------
  -I'd rather have a frontal lobotomy than a bottle in front of me

CANADIAN CENTER FOR POLICY ALTERNATIVES

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OfflineGernBlanston
unintended sideeffect
Male

Registered: 05/28/03
Posts: 842
Loc: OR
Last seen: 2 years, 5 months
Re: Corporate Globalization Fact Sheet [Re: carbonhoots]
    #2074448 - 11/05/03 06:54 PM (20 years, 4 months ago)

It's still mind-boggling to me that there are people who DON'T see this as a problem.

There are some EXCELLENT little factoids in there that hit the nail on the head as to the direct expressions of negative affect put on the table by the big corps.

Quote:


WTO and Global Trade: Who Benefits?
Since it was created in 1995, the WTO has ruled that every environmental policy it has reviewed is an illegal trade barrier that must be eliminated or changed. With one exception, the WTO also has ruled against every health or food safety law it has reviewed.





That, alone, should curdle your fucking skin.


--------------------
There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.
  --  Howard Zinn

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Invisiblez@z.com
Libertarian
Registered: 10/13/02
Posts: 2,876
Loc: ATL
Re: Corporate Globalization Fact Sheet [Re: GernBlanston]
    #2075189 - 11/05/03 09:51 PM (20 years, 4 months ago)

The question is what policies they choose to review. They almost certainly do not review every policy. Chances are they only review the policies that are a problem or cause more harm than good. That little "factoid" means very little without details. Can you name any of the policies that were called illegial trade barriers? Can you point us to a place where we can read the details of what was struck down?


--------------------
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - C.S. Lewis

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniencies attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." - Thomas Jefferson

Edited by z@z.com (11/05/03 10:06 PM)

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OfflineGernBlanston
unintended sideeffect
Male

Registered: 05/28/03
Posts: 842
Loc: OR
Last seen: 2 years, 5 months
Re: Corporate Globalization Fact Sheet [Re: z@z.com]
    #2080559 - 11/07/03 10:16 AM (20 years, 4 months ago)

A couple of places will give you more details than you could possible want:

Joseph Stiglitz - "Globalization and it's Discontents"
Naimi Klein - "Windows and Fences"
Greg Palast - "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy"; Chapter 4 Sell the Lexus, Burn the Olive Tree

A snippet from the Palast book:

"So I thumbed through my purloined IMF "Strategy for Ecuador" searching for a chapter connecting Ecuador's schools to the World Wide Web. (since the IMF had said the globalization was driven by the communications revolution) Instead, I found a secred schedule. Ecuador's government was ordered to raise the price of cooking gas by 80% on November 1, 2001, Also, the government had to eliminate twenty six thousand jobs and cut real wages for the remaining workers by 50% in four steps on a timetable specified by the IMF. By July 2000, Ecuador had to transfer ownership of it's biggest water system to foreign operators, then grant British Petroleum rights to build and oil pipeline over the Andes.

That was for starters. In all, the IMF's 167 detailed loan conditions looked less like an "Assistance Plan" and more like a blueprint for a financail coup d'etat."

The WTO, and by extension the IMF and the World Bank, have set policy by attaching detailed provisions to every transaction (read: loan) they make. In 2000, the WTO told South Africa that they had to buy AIDS drugs from the US at full commercial value, had to repay their loans (without which they could not have purchased the drugs) at full commercial interest, and while several South African drug companies had replicated generic versions of AIDS drugs patented by Glaxo-Wellcome (AZT), they were sued for intellectual property infringement by Glaxo and the WTO and then told by the WTO if they (South Africa) used those drugs then they would not be eligible for the loans.

Environmental policy has been struck down because it "creates an unfair or hostile trade barrier." Oh, boo fucking hoo... Because we tell a company that they can't dump pure Benzene into the local groundwater, this creates an unfair trade barrier? It would seem so, because these are exactly the kinds of environmental laws that are being struck down by the WTO (and more specifically, the WTO/IFM arm of NAFTA and the pending FTAA).

This is the real legacy of deregulation. If you beleived the deregulation simply gave corporations a fighting chance in the global economy by removing some random and inconsequential rules that would allow them to become players, then you are not paying NEARLY enough attention.

Z@Z, I don't usually agree with you, but you are usually fairly intelligent in your statements, one way or the other. However, you need to educate yourself on this one - it's waaay too complex and far too insidious to simply throw random opinions about what is "almost certainly" likely to be the case. This is scary shit.

And I won't even get into how many WTO conditions involve Halliburton/Bechtel. That's for another day.


--------------------
There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.
  --  Howard Zinn

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Invisiblez@z.com
Libertarian
Registered: 10/13/02
Posts: 2,876
Loc: ATL
Re: Corporate Globalization Fact Sheet [Re: GernBlanston]
    #2080606 - 11/07/03 10:30 AM (20 years, 4 months ago)

Quote:

GernBlanston said:
"So I thumbed through my purloined IMF "Strategy for Ecuador" searching for a chapter connecting Ecuador's schools to the World Wide Web. (since the IMF had said the globalization was driven by the communications revolution) Instead, I found a secred schedule. Ecuador's government was ordered to raise the price of cooking gas by 80% on November 1, 2001, Also, the government had to eliminate twenty six thousand jobs and cut real wages for the remaining workers by 50% in four steps on a timetable specified by the IMF. By July 2000, Ecuador had to transfer ownership of it's biggest water system to foreign operators, then grant British Petroleum rights to build and oil pipeline over the Andes.

That was for starters. In all, the IMF's 167 detailed loan conditions looked less like an "Assistance Plan" and more like a blueprint for a financail coup d'etat."




I must admit I am fairly ignorant on this issue, but that is not what I want. I want free trade. What is outlined above hardly seems like free trade and I would agree with you that it is a bad thing (based solely on what is written above and assuming it is accurate). But I'm off to the mountains for a nice weekend of sitting in the hottub drinking scotch and smoking cigars.


--------------------
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - C.S. Lewis

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniencies attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." - Thomas Jefferson

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