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G8 meeting in Kananaskis fails to deliver

By Derek MacCuish

It’s been a bad week for corruption and abuse. Yet another major corporation is caught cooking its books so that its senior management and accounting firm can make off with a few billion dollars. George Bush is telling the Palestinian people to embrace democracy by getting rid of Arafat. Several US states are unhappy that the Supreme Court is overthrowing tradition by protecting the mentally handicapped from execution. Even Martha Stewart has been accessorizing for summer with a little insider trading

In the same week we’ve seen G8 leaders telling Africans that they won’t get help fighting poverty if they don’t eliminate corruption and bad management. The “G8 Africa Action Plan” isn’t a “new beginning” for Africa . It’s arrogant and patronizing, and in the end will do nothing to improve the lives of impoverished Africans.

The G8 plan for Africa is based on a platform of trade and investment. The reality is that African “participation” in the global economy is limited to the provision of basic commodities. Their production and extraction is increasingly in the hands of foreign corporations. Privatization and deregulation of these industries is a condition of aid and debt relief.

The G8 countries are ignoring pleas for substantial change in the global economic system. The UN Conference on Trade and Development says that “the current form of globalization is tightening the poverty trap” in its “Least Developed Countries Report 2002," released this month.

This report goes on to say that policies toward impoverished countries “should include increased and more effective aid and debt relief, a review and recasting of international commodity policy, and policies which recognize the interdependence between the socio-economic marginalization of the poorest countries and the increasing polarization of the global economy.”

Debt relief got little attention in this summit. The G8 Action Plan document applauds the current program, calling it “generous” assistance for “countries that are following sound economic policies and good governance.” The reality is that the debt reduction available is quite meagre, and conditioned on wholesale privatization and deregulation of public utilities and industry.

Consider that poorest countries have, on average, been able to pay about half the total debt service that comes due each year. Take the example of Tanzania . Debt service due from 1991 to 1996 (the year the debt relief program was launched) averaged US$226 million. So probably the country was making actual payments of little more than $100 million.

In November, after five years of economic adjustment, Tanzania finally completed the debt relief program. Debt service is now predicted to be an "average of US$116 million during 2001/02 to 2010/11" according to the World Bank and IMF analysis. Total amount of real progress? Zero.

About a third of the debt payments African countries make to the World Bank - their biggest single creditor - is interest payments. There are two aspects of this to consider. One is the obvious question of why the World Bank - which makes almost US$2 billion profit each year - is taking so much money out of impoverished countries. The second has to do with the “cost” of debt relief.

If and when these debts are reduced, wealthy countries pay the cost. There is no cost to the World Bank, which doesn’t write off any debt. So the cost to wealthy countries is in the payments that go to institutions like the World Bank. The IMF operation is similar, but is a much smaller amount. Either way, this isn’t money that goes to impoverished countries to help in their fight against poverty.

The failure of the G8 leaders to act properly on debt relief - full cancellation, with the financial institutions taking the hit on debts they write off - is a discouraging indication of the low priority they allot to the lives of people in the poorest parts of our world. African leaders can use words like “partnership” all they want, but the G8 has made it clear there will be no changes made in the current arrangement of economic exploitation and dominance.

Interview with Aly Ercelawn: Fighting water privatization in Pakistan  >>

Harry Boesak, Workers Support Committee, Namibia, on "the everyday issues of the working class in Southern Africa, such as the trade union movement, and privatization of public utilities." >>

Yosh Tandon, political economist, Zimbabwe, on "conserving basic morality and decency. It is important for our people to prevent these values from being dictated by governments, large trans-national corporations, or international organizations such the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO." >>

Rosemary Nyerere Mwamakula, member of parliament, Tanzania, on "the immediate needs of our people as well as our goals on the international scale" >>

Three empires and a "kin-dom"

Commentary

by Ernie Schibli

They say that a good preacher has the Bible in one hand and the daily paper in the other. I was reminded of this recently when I speaking about social justice at one of Montreal ’s downtown churches.

First, the Bible. On that particular Sunday, the first reading was taken from the Book of Exodus which tells the story of the Jewish people’s escape from Egypt and their long arduous journey to a land of their own. The message is clear: It was God who set these slaves free from the oppression of Egypt . In return, the Israelites were to worship, obey and, above all, love God.

However, commentators frequently omit the fact that according to Exodus, God also told the Israelites that they were not to replicate the kind of society they had experienced in Egypt .

Egypt was but one of a long string of empires. Its impressive pyramids were not only great monuments but also symbols of the imperial socio-political structure. Perched alone on top stood the pharaoh; a step below were the princes, priests and military leaders. Further down were the ordinary Egyptians and at the very bottom were the masses - the poor, the slaves and the conquered peoples.

Exodus tells us that the Jewish people were to be quite different. It defines God as merciful - one who hears and responds to the cries of the poor. In return, the people were called to love and obey this compassionate God and to truly love one another. The sign of their fidelity was the way they treated the weakest in their midst. In biblical terms, the latter were “the widows, the orphans and the strangers in their midst.” Israel was called upon to firmly say “no” to the empire that was Egypt and indeed, to all empires. Its society was to be much more egalitarian and compassionate. After all, how could they truly love a compassionate God, if they themselves did not strive to live compassionately?

As on all Sundays, the common lectionary used by most Christian churches selects the second and third readings from what Christians call the New Testament. These writings come from the first century when another empire - Rome - was the dominant power. Larger, richer and more powerful than Egypt it dominated the Mediterranean basin. Like Egypt , its political and economic structure was based on the pyramid - the emperor on top, the poor and subjugated nations at the bottom. The role of the conquered countries, including Judea , was to serve the imperial power with wealth and labor. Everything and everybody was Rome ’s.

The gospel writers, especially Matthew, Mark and Luke, clearly present Jesus of Nazareth as being in conflict with Rome and the whole notion of empire. From King Herod’s attempt on his life when he was but a baby through to his death at the hands of the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate, Jesus spent most of his life de-legitimizing the notion of empire. His weapons were not the sword or dagger, but the espousal of a type of society directly opposed to what empire had to offer. Not unlike what was demanded of Israel at the time of Exodus, Jesus’ followers were to live the values of compassion, justice, reconciliation, peace and service to others.

This was made exceptionally clear when Jesus, in a vision, was offered all the wealth of the empire if he would but worship Satan. Not only did he categorically reject it but he immediately went out and began to preach the advent of God’s reign. The compassionate God of Exodus was beginning his reign of love and service and Jesus called upon his disciples to witness to this new way of living. The biblical term is “Kingdom” but, as a number of commentators have pointed out, the word “kin-dom” might be more suitable in this day and age - “kin-dom”, family. After all, a loose definition of the biblical notion of justice could be “treating everyone as family.”

So, from the Bible we now have two empires and a “kin-dom”. What about the third empire of our title? This is where we turn to today’s newspaper. Whether it be the war in Afghanistan, attempts to get rid of Sadam Hussein, meetings of G-7(8) leaders, finance and foreign ministers, management of the foreign debt of impoverished countries, the WTO, IMF and World Bank, globalization; our newspapers make it clear that we live in a new empire.

The idea that we live in an empire might grate on the average Canadian’s ears. We aren’t accustomed to the idea and we might even cringe when some of the anti-globalization protestors speak of American or Western imperialism. After all, there is no one called “emperor”, although President Bush often tries to act like one. Perhaps we just don’t see the forest because of all the trees. People in Africa, Latin America and Asia know very well what I am talking about for they are victimized by this empire.

It is the United States (with the support of its cohorts in the G-7) that effectively make decisions for the whole world. It decides who will live and who will die. Yes, there are disagreements from time to time between the U.S. and other G-7 countries but we must not be fooled. It is this group of countries that is currently sucking up the wealth of the world and doing a good job of destroying the natural environment at the same time. Sometimes the weapons they use are the helicopter gunship and the tank; more often than not it is a trade pact, or debt, or dumping subsidized agricultural commodities onto world markets.

This presents a very real challenge to the Christian - and other - communities that live inside the empire. Where do we direct our allegiance? If the Sacred Scriptures are anti-empire as I suggest, then it would seem that fidelity to our faith means active engagement in the struggle to build a different society - a kin-dom. It means non-cooperation with the empire in which we live, exposing its so-called values as false and frequently death-dealing. It may well also mean questioning the churches of which we are members for their cooperation with and legitimization of this empire. We have to make a choice and, as so often happens, to refuse to make that choice is a choice itself - for empire.

There are those, including people of religious faith, who question the value of the Scriptures written thousands of years and their ability to speak to us living in the twenty-first century. Yet human nature has not changed. The desire for wealth and power is as real now as it was in ancient Egypt or imperial Rome . The willingness to allow people to suffer, indeed even to cause that suffering, so that we can satisfy our wants (so successfully stimulated by our culture) has been brought to a much more sophisticated level but it is still with us. We might hide our pretensions to power and wealth under terms such as progress, freedom of the market, anti-terrorism and the other catch-words of our day but fundamentally they are no different than in ancient times. And what was true about greed, violence and indifference to the suffering of others then is equally true today.

So, which do we choose? Empire or kin-dom?

The Social Justice Committee to focus even more on social, economic and cultural rights in Mexico

Olivier Goddard, a French philosopher, has commented that a probable corollary to the prevailing neo-liberal belief that the market is part of the natural order is the vision of nature itself as a market.

  The prevalence of this vision in Mexico is reflected in the fact that an increasing number of urgent action appeals received by the Social Justice Committee have to do with land and the environment. In many of these appeals, the links between on the one hand social, economic, and environmental rights and on the other hand civil and political rights are very apparent. Furthermore, at times these appeals raise fundamental questions about the choice of development model.

  Earlier this year, the SJC sent out an urgent action on the situation on the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve in Chiapas . Mexican government officials have threatened to use force to evict the campesino communities that have settled in the Reserve. The quite inadequate dialogue process that is supposed to resolve the situation does not include the option - espoused by the Zapatista communities and by a number of members of the organization ARIC Independiente - that the Reserve be respected as a protected area but under local campesino community management and decision-making (rather than under government management).

  Zapatistas communities have already taken steps to prevent further deforestation in the areas of Montes Azules they control. The human rights at stake in this situation are the rights to land and livelihood - and therefore to food and housing, as well as the collective rights of indigenous peoples to manage their own territories. Any attempt on the part of the government to carry out a violent eviction would be likely to lead to violations of the right to physical integrity.

  As Mexican social analyst Armando Bartra has commented that in the course of this century the Montes Azules region has been damaged by the lumber industry, by extensive cattle raising, and by oil exploration. More damage was inflicted by the physical presence of the Mexican army, and by the land-clearing by campesinos (who during the 1950s and 1960s were encouraged by the Mexican government to settle in the region).

  He sees the demand for community control as essential. "The preservation, reproduction, and restoration of the fragile and diverse ecosystems will either be the work of the communities who live in and use those ecosystems or will not happen at all."

  In other words, the forest ecosystem can only be properly protected by indigenous communities exercising their collective right to the control and management of their territories. As Armando Bartra states, it will not be protected by "the World Bank with its Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, by the Mexican government's repressive conservationism, or the private accumulators of biodiversity."

  He sees the situation in Montes Azules as a "paradigmatic example of the terminal crisis of a system (of development) that excludes and destroys and that exacerbates to the extreme the contradictions between nature and human society."

  Recently, the SJC forwarded an urgent appeal, sent out by an organization in the state of Chihuahua , on behalf of approximately one hundred and sixty indigenous people in the Sierra Tarahumara region who are attempting to obtain legal recognition of their territorial rights to the forested lands on which they live. These legal efforts are part of their struggle to preserve their forest ecosystem, which is the last remaining old growth forest in the state of Chihuahua . In this struggle, they are opposed by a minority of local residents for whom the logging of the forest is a profitable business and the preservation of the ecosystem an unimportant or irrelevant matter.

In an attempt to understand the processes that are at work in the countryside both in Mexico and Québec, this autumn the Social Justice Committee will begin a project of education and exchange involving three Mexican campesino organizations and members of the “Union paysanne” network in Quebec.

People in our area with a particular interest in rural issues and in the ways in which neoliberal policies are affecting agriculture and the environment are urged to contact the SJC to find out more about the project.