George Monbiot (Guardian Unltd): A threat to the rich

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Guardian Unlimited (UK)
Dated Tuesday September 16

A threat to the rich
Forcing the poor countries to walk out of the Cancun trade talks may rebound on the west
By George Monbiot

Were there a Nobel Prize for hypocrisy, it would be awarded this year to Pascal Lamy, the EU's trade negotiator. A week ago, in the Guardian's trade supplement, he argued that the World Trade Organisation (WTO) "helps us move from a Hobbesian world of lawlessness into a more Kantian world - perhaps not exactly of perpetual peace, but at least one where trade relations are subject to the rule of law".
On Sunday, by treating the trade talks as if, in Thomas Hobbes's words, they were "a war of every man against every man", Lamy scuppered the negotiations, and very possibly destroyed the organisation as a result. If so, one result could be a trade regime, in which, as Hobbes observed, "force and fraud are ... the two cardinal virtues". Relations between countries would then revert to the state of nature the philosopher feared, where the nasty and brutish behaviour of the powerful ensures that the lives of the poor remain short.
At the talks in Cancun, in Mexico, Lamy made the poor nations an offer that they couldn't possibly accept. He appears to have been seeking to resurrect, by means of an "investment treaty", the infamous Multilateral Agreement on Investment. This was a proposal that would have allowed corporations to force a government to remove any laws that interfered with their ability to make money, and that was crushed by a worldwide revolt in 1998.
In return for granting corporations power over governments, the poor nations would receive precisely nothing. The concessions on farm subsidies that Lamy was offering amounted to little more than a reshuffling of the money paid to European farmers. They would continue to permit the subsidy barons of Europe to dump their artificially cheap produce into the poor world, destroying the livelihoods of the farmers there.

Read more.
This is the final instalment of George Monbiot's series on trade published in the Guardian. For those who missed the first two installments, here is:

• Part One: The Worst of Times, September 2
• Part Two: The Myth of Localism, September 9

And now, let us raise a glass to the collapse of the Cancun talks and begin to deal with the problems of formulating a truly just world.

[IrateCitizen]

1. Monbiot is confirming many of my thoughts about Cancun...

I think it's especially important to note the end of the article, where he addresses the debt that is owed by developing nations to the IMF. Where the industrialized North has used this as leverage against developing nations, forcing them to open up their markets and implement austerity measures, guaranteeing a neocolonial relationship -- it could now actually be the developing South that will use this as a weapon. If the developing world were to collectively default on their debt, it would be an absolute shitstorm for the banking institutions of the North. While banks would press for bailout packages from their respective governments, a bailout would probably cause the economies to collapse at a level not seen since 1929.

We can only hope that the solidarity between developing nations is maintained through the next couple of years, because this is the situation USTR Robert Zoellick has been looking for -- an opportunity to bully developing nations into signing bilateral trade deals that run counter to their basic economic interest.

[aneerkoinos]

4. Old saying of the jungle:

When I own the bank lot of money, the bank owns me.
When I own the bank obscene amount of money, I own the bank.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. How would the EU constitution affect the CAP?

As Monbiot says, many of the European countries are trying to distance themselves from the old Common Agricultural Policy - in interviews, British (Labour) politicans have seemed almost embarrassed to be associated with Lamy and his position.

I've never been able to work out why the CAP remains as it does - certainly in Britain, both Conservative and Labour have apparently tried to reform it, but never succeeded - always blaming the French (just because they're right about Iraq, it doesn't make them right about everything). But I don't know if that's a fair position, or our old animosity with them showing through.

So I wonder if the new EU constitution would give the governments a bit more power over agricultural policy, removing either the bureaucrats' power, or vetos by individual countries. Does anyone know?

[aneerkoinos]

3. Simple answer

EU is not just UK and France. Soon there are 23 other countries. CAP is changing but too slowly.

I think and hope next time EU is ready to give in quite a lot on agrisubsidies. This time Lamy had arrogant and stupid attitude that cost a lot of goodwill for EU, and his position and tactics were not supported by all EU-members. UK has been mentioned, also at one stage it was rumoured that Sweden had joined G23 :D. Not quite, but Sweden supported most of their demands.

(Edited to ad:)
Too bad both UK and Sweden are outside Eurozone. Thats where the real decisions are made.

[T_i_B]

5. Pascal Lamy.

Monbiot is replying in part to an article by Pascal Lamy in last week's Guardian trade supplement. Lamy's rhetoric may have some truth in it but the problem is that his actions do not appear to have lived up to his grand words at the moment by some distance. Lamy seems to be taking a large share of the blame for Cancun failing and it would seem on the evidence available to us that he was either too unwilling to comprimise or just unprepared for the advent of the G21.

Either way, we in the EU need to have a serious rethink about agriculture. Here is the Lamy article anyway, make of this what you will.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/wto/article/0,2763,1035804,00.html