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Are governments signing away our democratic rights?

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The French are indicating that the MAI would wipe out their film industry; in Britain the MAI has been criticized in Parliament and in the Financial Times; the ‘Asian Tigers’ are resisting the MAI, and a small but persistent group of Canadians are warning that the MAI will give corporations so much power that Parliament will not matter much any more.

What is the MAI? Unknown to most people, representatives of the world’s 28 wealthiest countries are meeting at the Organization for Economic cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris to negotiate a Multilateral Agreement on Investment, called the MAI, scheduled to be signed behind closed doors in May 1998. Virtually no one had heard about the MAI until citizens sounded the alarm, and very few still know and understand its implications.

Proponents of the MAI say simply that it creates a level playing field for investors globally, and that it will be beneficial especially for developed countries. From their point of view, the different rules and regulations of national, provincial, state or local governments are a hindrance to doing business. Regulations and laws vary from place to place, and these are a nuisance. The consistency guaranteed by the MAI would reassure investors, and this would be beneficial to all OECD countries, they say.

Not so, say opponents. Rather, the MAI gives the world’s corporations a virtual charter of rights and freedoms, ensuring them the right to conduct business and move their operations wherever and whenever they like, without any government regulations.

National and local laws represent national sovereignty, or the power of governments to set regulations, say those who are alarmed. National laws, for instance, protect the environment or give employment or financial incentives such as grants for job creation to local businesses, or financial support for films, books, magazines and other cultural enterprises. Such preferential treatment would be challenged under the MAI, because foreign companies would expect to have rights equal to local businesses. Opponents suggest that laws to protect the environment, labour, business and culture would eventually interfere with the rights to make profits, and that local laws would no longer hold under the MAI.

It is no wonder that a few Canadians have become very worried. Canada has historically been vulnerable to being overpowered by the culture of its neighbour to the south, the US. Because there is no language barrier outside Quebec, Canadians are flooded with American movies, magazines, and other US products. This is so pervasive that, in a recent survey, Canadian high school students were asked to name the Prime Minister of Canada, and one-quarter of them named the American President instead. To counteract this trend, the Canadian Government has in the past given financial incentives to Canadian books, magazines, films, and other cultural items to offset the barrage of materials produced by its more populous neighbour.

Seeing the danger of the MAI, a small group of Canadian citizens began to educate others via the Internet and by giving lectures. They approached politicians to ask their position on the MAI, and found that politicians generally did not know much about it. Since then, the Province of British Columbia has officially opposed the MAI, although the agreement is under the jurisdiction of the Federal Government. In addition, one citizen, Connie Fogal, is launching a legal challenge to the Federal Government’s authority to sign away the power of the citizen.

Under the MAI, products such as films are simply an investment. A recent Canadian Broadcasting Corporation newscast reported that the French film industry has become concerned, recognizing that the French Government would no longer be able to give preferential treatment to, or subsidize, films made by the French. As a result, they believe, the French film industry would essentially be wiped out.

A French film industry spokesman threatened that “The Americans, who are the driving force behind the MAI, are not going to bully us into creating a world-wide mono-culture.” American negotiators have, on the other hand, indicated that if culture is taken out of the agreement, it would be too watered down for them to sign. French opponents have responded by saying that this would be a dream come true.

David Weston, who began to raise the MAI issue in Canada in the spring of 1997 by approaching both federal and provincial politicians, and subsequently key political advisers in Britain, says: “The OECD has recognized the MAI’s unpopularity, and is abandoning it under its present name and sponsor. Negotiations are already under way in Paris to rename the agreement and sign it under the World Trade Organization (WTO) instead. I have confirmation from Claude Laverdure, Assistant Deputy Minister (Europe) in the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, that the MAI is indeed being removed from the OECD and that while its move to the WTO was possible, he was not aware of the timeline.”

Weston explains further: “The original WTO-sponsored Multilateral Investment Agreement faltered because the Third World saw its neo-colonialism implications. The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), along with its Canadian counterparts, who seem to be the main lobbyists in this game, subsequently moved the responsibility for its implementation to the OECD, changing the name to MAI, in the hope of pushing it through. They then ‘invited’ the Third World to clamber on board under OECD rules.”

However, Weston adds: “Now that the ICC and their ilk have discovered that public awareness and ire are aroused, they have decided to re-route it once again back to the WTO. The implications of WTO’s involvement are important, for under C.57, Chapter 47 (1994) WTO Implementation Act, the Canadian Prime Minister is given authority to sign any international agreements within the purview of the WTO, without reference to Parliament.”

Nevertheless, Weston says: “Any agreement our country signs under the WTO Implementation Act would be illegal. Under the Canadian Constitution Act (Interpretation Act, R.S.C. 1985, c.1-21, section 42(1)), it is absolutely clear that no parliament, present or future, can be shackled or bound by the decisions of any previous parliament. It is my contention, therefore, that because the WTO Implementation Act does attempt to bind present and future parliaments, that it is ‘ultra vires’, that is, beyond the jurisdiction of parliament. If any of its agreements signed bind any parliament beyond the life of any one parliament, then this government is acting illegally, and as such, is bordering on treason, because the right of citizens to bring in whatever legislation they please, is sacrosanct.”

Weston says that he is taking such an active role in raising public awareness about these obscure negotiations because “These agreements are not primarily about trade and investment but, rather, an attempt to replace democratic involvement and control by citizens with corporate control by a tiny elite. My concern is that while our attention is being diverted over the MAI, other similarly obnoxious agreements are being signed under our noses.”

Weston and a small group of citizens remain active in interpreting these agreements to the public and politicians alike. It appears that this minority has had some successes, as people like David continue to try to bring down the Goliath of unregulated international commerce.

The quantity versus quality argument in economics

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An important debate is currently taking place between neo-classical economists, whose influence predominates in business and government circles around the world, and the so-called New Economists, often referred to also as alternative economists. Many of them have questioned the narrow focus of economic measures such as GDP (Gross Domestic Product, or all the goods and services produced in a given year). In their efforts to go beyond this type of measurement or indicator, more modern economists involved with the New Economics have attempted to develop a different type of index of measurement. This measurement involves transactions which are not based on money; work which is regular but unpaid and which, in important ways, underpins the money-based economy; informal, barter-based exchanges; and qualitative factors such as environmental impacts.

Much work is done in the United States and in Britain, where the New Economics Foundation is located. The focus of the New Economics concerns the development of sustainable economics. In a recent interview with Ed Mayo, the current Director of the New Economics Foundation in London, I mentioned that sustainability sometimes seems a vague term, and has been used in a variety of ways. He agreed, but thinks that the many definitions the concept embraces argue in its favour. Sustainability is really a term that points to concerns about unrestrained growth, which depletes non-renewable resources or creates environmental impacts which severely damage animal, plant and human health. The quantity-versus-quality debate can also be understood as the growth-versus-sustainability debate, and ultimately is an important philosophical debate about values. The urgency of the debate, however, relates to real and alarming reductions in the quality of life for many.

What we measure matters, because government policies rely on these measurements. On current GDP measures, a country may be measuring growth without costing-in harmful impacts from that growth. An obvious example is the incidence of asthma and other respiratory diseases, which has risen apace with increased traffic in major cities of the world. In the United Kingdom, asthma is now the third most frequent cause of all hospital admissions, and the major medical societies are leading the way in pointing to the urgent need for revision of transport policies. In simple terms, this will mean fewer cars on the road, restricted areas and improved public transport, as well as continued research into non-toxic fuels. For the health of urban dwellers everywhere to improve, and the increased costs of ill-health to decline, this type of research needs to be given a high priority. Governments need to take a firm lead in informing people about the real costs, to the nation as a whole, of increased pollution and attendant ill-health. For this to happen, a change of thinking is required, and a corresponding change in what is measured would help towards that goal. Prices need to be separated from real costs.

Another way of looking at the striking limitations of the much-used GDP measurement is to focus on how much it leaves out, as well as on the notion that measuring economic activity per se tells us nothing about whether it is harmful or beneficial. For example, what appears to be growth in a nation may be skewed very much in favour of a particular sector of the population, so that a significant segment of the population is excluded. Yet this exclusion from economic activity might result in a growing and dangerous lack of social cohesion and attendant rising crime, which is very expensive for the nation as a whole, despite good annual growth figures on conventional measurements. The measurements might mask successful non-money strategies involving barter. Some economic activity masks social disasters which ultimately can cost the tax-payer a great deal.

A famous example of the limitations of GDP comes from the work of Ted Halstead and Clifford Cobb: a terminal cancer patient who has recently undergone a divorce and has moved house would count as an “economic hero” because of all the economic activity generated in the wake of his illness, his divorce and his move to a new home.

Work on new indicators which broaden what is measured and attempt to mirror more closely what happens in people’s lives includes the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW). It looks at ozone depletion costs; the costs of car accidents; loss of habitats and farmlands; defensive private expenditures on education and health; and attempts to cost activities such as unpaid household work by comparing it, in a given country, with the cost of paid domestic work, as well as including other factors.

Interesting graphs published recently in a briefing paper by Ed Mayo show that in both Britain and the United States, GDP and the ISEW grew apace from the 1950s to the end of the 1970s, after which GDP continues to grow whereas the ISEW begins to decline. This seems to indicate that growth is good up to a point, beyond which social and environmental costs begin to appear. This is now known as the “threshold”. For many, these comparisons mean that while some people may have more money in their pockets, the quality of their lives seems to have declined. As many of the quality-oriented economists point out, the trouble with relying so much on GDP is that it can only add; it cannot subtract. They also point out that, when it was first developed, it was never meant to acquire its current predominance as an indicator. Failure to take into account real costs and quality of life issues such as increased air, water and land pollution, increasing noise, the rise of particular diseases, a more frantic pace of work with decreasing time spent with the family, and so on, can result in important policy failures.

The idea, still fashionable among neo-classical economists, that economics should not go beyond measuring quantity is itself a value. It avoids issues of context as well as of quality, and therefore can lead to mistaken decisions which are unresponsive to genuine human needs.

Microcredit Summit seeks to help world’s poorest

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For people like Francisca Rojas of El Salvador, a little bit of money can go a long way. A little bit of money has to go a long way.

Rojas was orphaned at the age of nine and lived by herself in a ditch beside the road. A woman found her, took her home, and put her to work washing and ironing. Rojas ran away when she was 17 and had her first child when she was 18.

“I went to my first [microcredit bank] meeting and was afraid I could not [take and repay a loan],” she said. “But the bank promoter who was there believed I could do it, and I was so desperate that I tried it.”

With her first loan, Rojas bought spices, noodles, and little ceramic pieces on a tray which she sold at the market. After three loans of $50 each, she had saved $45. “I never saved before,” she said. “I used to earn $17.50 a week. Now I earn from $35 to $53 each week. I can spend almost twice as much for food, live in a much nicer home, buy medicines, and save money. I feel safer now. I sleep calmly at night because I am not so worried about how to pay back a money lender. I don’t have to prostrate myself to anyone. I have confidence. When you have been as poor as I have been, there is a lot of shame. Even when I was a child, people wouldn’t look at me. I guess they were afraid I would ask them for something. I never had any friends. Now each week I come to our bank meeting. They are glad to see me. Now I have friends. This is the most important thing,” she concluded.

Rojas is one of an estimated 8 million people around the world who have access to microcredit. Programs such as the one Francisca works with provide very small loans, training, and, importantly, peer support, to the poor to help them start or expand self-employment projects.

A worldwide Microcredit Summit convened in Washington DC recently with the goal of increasing the 8 million people currently receiving microcredit to “100 million of the world’s poorest families, especially the women of those families, by the year 2005.” It is an ambitious goal, especially given the humble beginnings of the microcredit movement a little more than 20 years ago.

Humble beginnings

Mohammed Yunus, a US-trained economist, returned to his native country of Bangladesh in 1972, one year after the nation became independent, to head the Economics Department of Chittagong University. But he soon discovered that the economic theories he taught at school meant little to the poor people he spoke with in the villages. He found one woman who earned two pennies a day making bamboo stools. But she had to borrow money for the materials from a trader who bought the final product at a price which barely covered the cost of the materials. It was essentially slave labor.

“I took a student of mine,” Yunus said, “and went around the village for several days to find out if there were other people like her who were borrowing from traders … In a week’s time, we came up with a list of 42 such people. The total amount needed by all 42 of them was only $30. I was terribly ashamed of myself for being part of a society which could not provide $30 to 42 able, hard-working, skilled persons to make a living for themselves.”

He took $30 out of his pocket and asked the student to distribute the money to the people who needed it, telling them it was a loan, and they had to pay him back. The people’s lives were improved, and they repaid their loans to Yunus. But he soon realized that, as a university professor, he couldn’t provide money for all the people who needed it. So he went to a bank. The bank manager literally laughed at him. “This little money is not even worth all the papers they have to fill in, and the bank is not going to do that,” the manager said. And besides, the poor had no collateral to back up the loans. Finally, after months of wrangling, Yunus persuaded the bank that he would be the guarantor of a $300 loan, which he proceeded to give to the poor people of the village in 1976.

The villagers paid Yunus back, and he was able to distribute more loans. Yunus eventually set up his own bank, the Grameen [Rural] Bank in 1983, to lend only to the poorest people in Bangladesh — landless, assetless people — mostly women. The average loan size is $75, and the repayment rate is 98 per cent. The Grameen Bank has lent to 2.1 million people so far.

With some variations, the Grameen Bank model has been replicated around the world, helping millions of people across the globe.

At the Summit, Yunus compared microcredit efforts today to the first airplane flight by the Wright Brothers at the beginning of the century. “Some find our plane unsafe, clumsy, not good enough,” he said. “But soon we will be flying our Boeings, our Concordes and launching booster rockets.”

Movers and shakers

The impressive roster of participants at the Microcredit Summit, and their enthusiasm for microcredit programs, was a tribute not only to Yunus, but also to the power of his idea that the poor can help themselves out of poverty if given half a chance.

Among the more than 2,000 participants from 100 countries were three presidents and two prime ministers; Queen Sofia of Spain; the President of the World Bank, and the presidents of major regional development banks; the heads of UN agencies; members of parliament; heads of commercial banks and private corporations; heads of major foundations and philanthropists from around the world; representatives of nongovernmental organizations; practitioners — those who implement microcredit programs across the globe; as well as borrowers like Francisca Rojas who have received the benefits of microcredit.

The presence of the world’s movers and shakers, from every part of the political spectrum, appeared to mean more than simply efforts at photo opportunities with the gathered media. US First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, a co-chair of the summit, who, along with the US Secretary of the Treasury, spoke at the conference, said that she and the President, Bill Clinton, first met Mohammed Yunus in 1986, and have been deeply committed to microcredit since then.

Hillary Clinton showed photos of her visits to microcredit programs in Bangladesh, Chile, India, Nicaragua, and the US itself. The First Lady talked about a woman she met in Chile who had received a loan for a new sewing machine. “She said that when she got that new sewing machine she felt like a caged bird set free. And that is a good way to describe how many of the people I have met seem to feel when given the opportunity.”

Mrs. Clinton went on to describe the opportunity presented at this moment in history: “As we move toward this 21st century, we have an opportunity that has seldom come, if ever, in the history of humankind. We have a world that can, with technology, democracy, and free enterprise extend the benefits of prosperity and peace to countless millions whose lives can be lifted up.”

The US Government’s international development agency, USAID, has targeted $120 million in both 1996 and 1997 for microenterprise projects worldwide.

Japan, the largest single provider of international assistance among nations, was represented at the Summit by former Prime Minister Tsutomu Hata and two members of the Japanese parliament. Hata and his colleagues, part of their parliament’s League for Poverty Eradication, expressed their determination to support and “promote grass roots assistance, especially the microcredit movement” in their communications with the Japanese Government, private financial institutions, economic organizations and the public at large. They urged the government to shift $1,000 million of Japan’s $10,000 million annual overseas development budget to grassroots assistance, with $100 million of that devoted to microcredit programs.

Birth of a new movement

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in a statement read by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) administrator Gus Speth, called the summit “a landmark event in our ongoing fight to eradicate poverty.”

“When the poorest, especially women, receive credit, they become economic actors with power, power to improve not only their own lives, but in a widening circle of impact, the lives of their families, their communities, their nations, and the community of nations…. Microfinance, though not a panacea, has proven to be a remarkable instrument to lift the poor out of their plight.

“I therefore fully endorse the goal of this summit to reach 100 million of the world’s poorest households by the year 2005 … In our common struggle, you can count on the UN to be with you throughout this effort.”

UNESCO President Federico Mayor said that we must be bold in our efforts to fight poverty. “We must learn to share,” he said. “We must dare to share.”

John Hatch, founder of FINCA, a nonprofit group that has pioneered microlending in Latin America, said that the summit gave birth to “one of the largest humanitarian endeavors ever attempted by the human family … We have launched a movement too powerful to fail, a movement led not by governments, but by their citizens. Its power is fueled by the most potent energy of all — a mother’s love for her children.”

World Bank President James Wolfensohn said his institution, the largest international lending agency in the world, was an enthusiastic supporter of the summit’s efforts. “We commit ourselves at this summit to be your partner. We will help in whatever way we can. If we don’t get it right, tell us how we can get it right. Let us work together as partners in trying to reach that 100 million goal, and in trying to leave the world a more peaceful and safer place for our children.”

The bottom line

Summit organizers estimate that it will cost $21,600 million in grants, low interest loans and commercial loans over the next nine years to reach the goal of providing microfinancing to 100 million families by the year 2005. Yunus in his remarks reminded the audience that the summit was not a fund-raising event, but there were financial commitments announced. Among them was Microstart, a new pilot program from UNDP, which pledged $40 million to help microenterprise efforts in 25 countries.

Conference participants signed a declaration of support for the summit’s goal, and worked on action plans detailing how each would work individually and institutionally to attain that goal. Most of the institutional action plans are due for completion by 1998. The “boldest and most inspired” of those plans will be published by summit organizers as they are finalized. In 1999, the summit secretariat will produce an evaluation of the progress being made toward achieving the summit’s goal.

The meaning of that goal, as expressed by Makgomo Mangena, a micro-entrepreneur from South Africa, is clear: “As for me,” she said, “I will be happy if my children and I live long. I am determined that each of them will have a better future.”

You talk a lot about politics and economics, which are all very materialistic, but is this what the Christ is all about?

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Yes, indeed. Absolutely. It is not primarily as a religious leader that he is coming. You may look for him rather as an educator in the widest sense of the word, advocating changes in our political, economic and social life. All of these are fundamentally spiritual. Spirituality does not refer to religious matters only. Everything that lifts men above their present level, whether on the physical, emotional, mental or intuitional level, is spiritual. We must broaden our concept of what is spiritual in order to recognize the Christ.

He comes to show that the spiritual life can be lived in every department of human living ― not alone in the religious field; that the scientific path to God, about which he will teach, is wide enough and varied enough to accommodate all men. Everyone, in the future, will come to realize the spiritual basis of life, and will seek to give it expression in his work. And whereas today only the seer or the mystic knows the true meaning of reality, this will be the experience of all men, whatever their way. Not all men are religious; religion is a way, a specific way.

The Christ will show that all of us can come to an awareness of the ways of God. He will show the path to that, the scientific path, the path of initiation; and under the guidance and stimulus of the Christ and his disciples we shall know God ― truly know and see God, in this coming age. Large numbers of humanity will stand before the Hierophant, the Lord of the World Himself, and in doing so will see the Face of the Father, the Face of God. This is an occult fact and is the promise given by the Christ to the world. This will be his main function in the coming age, to lead humanity into the Spiritual Kingdom, the Kingdom of Souls, or the Kingdom of God ― which already exists, and has always existed, as the Masters and initiates of the Hierarchy. Under the guidance of the Christ all of us will enter that Kingdom. This is his mission, to establish the Kingdom of God, outwardly, in the world. He will fulfill that mission if we respond to the need of the time, which is the transformation of society along more spiritual and just lines.