After The War Comes The Opportunity

It is no surprise to learn that the American government is lining up potential investors in Georgia:

The US Department of Commerce is working with two private American-Georgian business associations to stage a trade summit in Tbilisi in late October. The initiative is part of a general effort to bolster investor confidence in Georgia.

The Bush administration has been a leading backer of Georgia as the Caucasus country rebuilds following Russia’s August invasion. The US Congress has already approved an administration-sponsored aid package worth as much as $1 billion. The idea for the business summit reportedly came from the "highest level" in Washington, and it is seen as a means to stimulate private-sector interest in Georgia’s economic recovery.

While the guest list for the summit has not been publicly released, organizers note that some Fortune 500 companies, as well as large private equity firms, have expressed an intention to attend. According to a partial list of confirmed companies made available to EurasiaNet, investors are considering multi-million dollar projects in several sectors including hydro-power production, power transmission, wind energy, hospitals and wine. The summit will be chaired by Deputy Commerce Secretary John Sullivan. In addition to organizing the Tbilisi summit, the US Trade Office is pushing Congress to expand Georgia’s eligibility for duty-free imports to the United States.

According to Tamara Koziridze, a deputy economic minister, the Georgian government is "hoping" that summit will bring new investment into the country. "We hope very much it will be productive in the sense that companies with a real interest in Georgia will participate and will have sufficient follow up," Kovziridze said.

What a fantastic opportunity for corporate America. Multi-million dollar contracts will be signed, huge swathes of the Georgian economy will be handed over to American companies and American hegemony in the region will be confirmed. It's almost like the US wanted Georgia (one of the fastest growing ecnomies in the region) to start a war it was bound to lose if only to pick up the pieces and have a tasty slice of future growth with the aid of a neo-conservative, anti-democratic Georgian leader. Good work chaps.

Tesco - Every Little Helps

Capitalists often tend to claim that capitalism and democracy go hand in hand. That for people to be free from state tyranny, the best option is to reduce the power of the state and put public industry in the hands of capitalists who are free from the constraints of government bureaucracy. This would then, according to Milton Friedman's acolytes, lead to greater economic stability and prosperity. However, as we have seen in countries such as Chile over the years, in order for capitalism to truly thrive, civil liberties must be curtailed and a new authoritarianism must rise up. It is in this context that we see the latest efforts by the corporate world to replace state tyranny with corporate tyranny.

Tesco's operation in Thailand (Tesco Lotus) has taken the rather dangerous step of attempting to shut down the right to free speech in regard to it's operations in the country. According to reports:

Tesco Lotus, one of the biggest retailers in Thailand, has filed two staggering defamation cases against a Thai columnist and a former member of Parliament, sending a strong message to civil society and the press to tread carefully before criticising the retailing giant in Thailand.

Tesco Lotus is suing columnist/academic Kamol Kamoltrakul and former Thai National Legislative Assembly (NLA) member Jit Siratranont for 100 million baht and one billion baht, respectively, after they criticised and questioned the aggressive expansion strategies of Tesco Lotus in Thailand.

Put aside for one moment, the laughable concept that to defend against allegations of aggression, one must act aggressively. What exactly did they say that caused such offence?

Siratranont, currently the secretary general of the Thai Chamber of Commerce, was quoted by British newspaper "The Observer" as saying in a speech to 150 activists: "The large-scale expansion of the big retailers must be exercised with great care – not too aggressively and too rapidly - to reduce the potential tension, which could lead to serious conflict. There is also the need for the small retail traders to adjust to changes. Tesco Lotus must take all of this into account."

Kamol was sued for an article published in the Thai-language "KrungThepTurakit" (BangkokBizNews), which expressed generally the same concerns about Tesco Lotus' aggressiveness, and also what the columnist suggested was the retailing giant's weak social responsibility in Thailand.

Hardly worthy of a defamation case. Slowly but surely, across the globe, a new style of tyranny is spreading. This tyranny protects the rights of the rich whilst destroying civil liberties. Oh yes, they may tempt you with 'competitive prices' and the illusion of 'choice', but they simply want you to buy their goods and shut up. Totalitarianism is back, and we're the ones paying for it.

....And So Do Lidl....

Looks like Lidl really is in competition with Wal-Mart/Asda, in more ways than one:

The German discount supermarket chain Lidl has been accused of spying on its employees, including recording how many times they went to the toilet as well as details about their love lives, personal finances and menstrual cycles.

An investigation by the German news magazine Stern uncovered an extensive espionage system in its shops across Germany. It obtained hundreds of pages of documents gathered by detectives allegedly employed by the chain to find out about its staff. The surveillance took place via mini-video cameras installed by detectives. The official reason given to store managers was to reduce shoplifting.

Critics have accused Lidl of using "Stasi methods", referring to the secret police of the former communist East German state who kept track of the most banal and intimate details of hundreds of thousands of citizens' lives.

The detectives' records include details of precisely where employees had tattoos as well as information about their friends. "Her circle of friends consists mainly of drug addicts," reads one record. The detectives also had the task of identifying which employees appeared to be "incapable" or "introverted and naive".

Capitalism and right-wing politics will lead us towards a police state where corporations have immunity from prosecution. Let no-one lead you to believe that corporations can be any less totalitarian than states.

Government in the Pay of Big Business

Proof, if proof be need be, that New Labour just lurve the filthy lucre:

They are among Britain's wealthiest businessmen, with access to the heart of Downing Street. Yet little has been known about the elite group of multinational chairmen, or exactly what they talk about during their breakfast meetings with the prime minister. Until now, that is.

Downing Street documents disclosed to the Guardian reveal how the secretive lobbying group, which consists of the heads of Britain's most powerful corporations, including BP, Unilever, HSBC, Shell and British American Tobacco (BAT), have used their private access to protect the pensions of the ultra-rich.

The exclusive club, known as the multi-national chairmen's group, consists of fewer than 10 executives. Its members are invited to Downing Street to tell the prime minister how they believe government policies are affecting international corporations.

Downing Street has been forced to release the prime ministerial documents after a two-year battle over freedom of information. They show the executives:

· outmanoeuvred Gordon Brown, then chancellor, to shield "fat cat" pensions from his proposals to tax them more heavily;

· wanted Tony Blair, then prime minister, to lobby George Bush to treat corporations more favourably in return for supporting the invasion of Iraq;

· and lobbied for less "burdensome" red tape so multinational corporations would continue basing themselves in Britain.

And they call this a Labour government.

Privatisation - A Socialist Plot

I seem to remember recently being upbraided for describing the current government as slightly to the right on the political spectrum. And then, I read this piece in today's Guardian and wondered how on earth anyone could seriously suggest we are living under a socialist government:

The prime minister has defended the accreditation of in-company qualifications after it was announced that staff at McDonald's could gain the equivalent of an A-level in burger bar management.

The fast food giant, Network Rail and the airline Flybe are the first three companies to win government approval to become an exam board.

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority has approved a pilot "basic shift manager" course, which will train staff in everything they need to run a McDonald's outlet, from marketing to human resources and customer service skills.

The budget airline Flybe will start piloting their "airline trainer programme" in the summer, which will cover everything from engineering to cabin crew training.

And so the corporate take-over of our education system continues at a fearless pace. Privatisation and socialism eh? How anyone could suggest that this country is a socialist enclave and yet keep a straight face is beyond me.

Environmental Outrage Down Under - 200 000 hectares of native forest doomed by industrial insanity

In case you've missed it, one of the world's last bastions of exquisite ancient ecosystems - Tasmania - has been in a state of virtual civil war which has finally spread to the mainland and is going global even as you read this.

It is a bitter war between citizenry, astroturf lobby groups paid by the logging industry, and both major political parties who - at state and federal level - have set aside their differences to support Gunns - Tasmania's largest landholder, and a logging powerhouse responsible for around 5 million tonnes of export woodchips each year, largely from native forests.

All due process went out the window, the state government skimped on detail and rushed through legislation, the federal government was seemingly backed into a corner and yielded with a whimper. All so that the world's largest pulp mill, turning 4 million tonnes of forest into one million tonnes of paper ingredients and more than ten million tonnes of greenhouse gases annually, could be built in a totally unsuitable valley and dump 70 million litres of effluent A DAY into an ocean rich in seals, penguins, and a diversity of flora and fauna.

Please - if you are concerned about climate change, if you are concerned about biodiversity, if you are concerned about forests, if you are concerned about corporations destroying every last natural inch of the planet for no good reason - please visit this campaign website. Get informed, show your support, consider ways in which you might be part of the global difference needed to halt this project now that it has been rubber-stamped at all levels of government.

It is a seriously off-kilter project. A majority of Tasmanians oppose it, a recent poll showed that over 83% of Australians don't trust the recently announced federal approval, and all avenues of resistance are now going to require determination, support, and creative activism.

I was feeling somewhat guilty about finally emptying my pockets of any crumbs of hope that Peter Garrett - formerly the legendary singer of Midnight Oil, now the increasingly debilitating shadow environment minister - might suddenly emerge from a phone box wearing a cape made of organic hemp with a huge green 'S' on his chest. But then he further clarified his position.

Mr Garrett argued yesterday that the tracts of old-growth forest that will supply the mill were already earmarked for logging under the Regional Forest Agreement.

"One of the policy goals for using the existing forest identified for that purpose is to add value to it.

"I prefer to see value added — so long as the environment is properly protected — rather than seeing woodchips sailing out to sea," he said.

Now, disgusting as it is people do throw around Hitler and Stalin analogies like so much confetti at a wedding (between all levels of government and a select group of well-subsidised private interests). I hate this trend as it generally discredits thoroughly justified anger and revulsion. So without specifying a context, let me just say that this comment from Garrett makes me think of a situation where somebody might endorse killing somebody and melting down their gold fillings, rather than just killing them. The viable option of protecting life where it exists seems preferable to all scenarios apparently on offer, yet all those with responsibility to proclaim as much seem far too scared to do so.

So weak are opportunities for public representation in the supposed houses of democracy, Greens leader Senator Bob Brown is repeatedly forced to personally fund legal challenges to government environmental actions in court. The Greens are drawing closer to lodging a formal legal challenge on the basis of Malcolm Turnbull's conditional approval being legally inoperable within the ambit of the EPBC Act by which he is reluctantly empowered. Bob Brown explains,

“My reading of Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act section 132 (indicates) the minister has not acted within the law,“ Senator Brown said.

“We will have our barristers look at that and they are as we speak,” he said.

“We warned before he made the approval he should act within the law.”

It is an Akira situation - the beast of inequity is growing like a snowballing lump of departmental pr masturbation, environmental catastrophe, and corporate cancer but there is an overwhelming certainty that it must collapse under the weight of its own illegitimacy. It's not going to break down on its own though, it's going to need a lot of help from some unlikely places.

Please - if you're an eco-warrior, get involved and mobilize anyway that you can think to.

Check out Tasmanian Times for breaking news, commentary and background,
hit my website and check out 'Tasmania' in the category cluster,
go to the campaign site at TAP and see where you as an international citizen might be able to get involved in derailing this monster,
learn a whole lot more at Chris Lang's definitive site for anybody concerned about industrial forest operations globally,
and check out Bank Track, where they're leading the global charge to cut off financial lines of supply for the project.

Sorry to get all desperate on you, but this campaign desperately needs support. It's asymmetrical warfare, but it's been that way all along and even with full government sanction the tide has been slowly turning against this insane project for months now. Among the next steps, it is likely that direct action followed by mass arrests and destructive civil lawsuits against protesters will follow, as this has been the form of both Gunns and the Tasmanian government so far.

Please don't just flip past this if you're at all eco-minded. Now is the time for an international wave to build against this over-riding of public interest. Like the Franklin Dam and the pulp mill project before this, this project can be stopped but only by awareness, outcry, and action.