The North Coast times-eagle., July 01, 1996, Page 4, Image 4

PAGE 4
areas, the companies who can pay lower salaries at home; and
those who have cap'ital to invest where labor is cheapest, and
who as a result will receive larger dividends. But they will be like
winners of a poker game on the Titanic. The wounds inflicted on
their societies will be too deep, and brutal consequences could
follow."
The instance of the Beaverton based Nike corporation
tells this tale clearly. Nike once had five manufacturing plants in
the United States. Now it has none and is wealthy enough to
chase cheap labor all across Asia, subcontracting to manufactur­
ing plants first in Korea — at $1 an hour, then in Indonesia — at
15 cents per hour. By doing this they benefit from paying wages
vastly lower than those they would pay in the U.S. and from the
fact Asian workplace standards are considerably lax in both
employee and environmental protection. To consumer chagrin
these savings are not passed directly on the shoe buyer in the
United States. As the market still supports the onshore pro­
duction price of the product this kind of "free market" practice
results essentially in major corporate profits - not buyer bonuses
or trickledown benefits.Of course this is perfectly legal and really
sound business. The problem is that moving American money
offshore takes jobs from our marketplace and capital from pros­
pective onshore consumers' pockets. This means somewhere
down the line Nike will lose its affluent U.S.shoe-product buyers,
turning malls into ghost towns and thus cutting their own corpo­
rate throat.
But the situation dives even deeper into the fabric of
national sovereignty. The GATT text is actually more powerful
than any member country's constitution — including ours. Ralph
Nader had this to say in April 1994 as the procedure of GATT
ratification was about to begin:
“Right now environmental policy is set in our country at
the local, state and federal levels of government. Under these
proposed trade agreements the decisions will increasingly be
made outside the country by private tribunal. Under the GATT
and NAFTA arrangements they'll be made without any of our
democratic rights. We wont be able to elect these people. We
wont be able to dis-elect them. We wont be able to get freedom
of information. We wont be able to participate in the proposed
draft of these decisions in any way whatsoever."
PART 2
FROM PAGE3
include disarming nuclear warheads and disposing of chemical
weapons) are driving nails in existing and proposed social
programs — environmental protection, medicare, medicaid,
education, and the carrot Bill Clinton waved before the voters,
a national health insurance.
(Did you know of all the industrial countries only the
United States and South Africa do not have national health care
programs? How strange Gore Vidal, among others, called our
so-called “free enterprise" health care system “socialism for the
wealthy and free enterprise for the poor.")
How can this be? We live in one of the richest societies
in the world yet for some peculiar reason it is our last priority to
ensure the health and education of the common people. The
frightening truth is that our society has reached a previously
unheard of degree of financial stratification. The financial profile
of the United States mirrors that of the most radically totalitarian
countries of the third world. One percent of the population holds
40% of the property. And the trend is only getting worse as
demonstrated in this age of industry "downsizing." The headlines
continue to scream of increasing corporate profits and a boom­
ing stockmarket vtfiile vtfiispering of the declining "real" wages
and job cutbacks. During the 1950s corporations paid 40% of the
taxes. Today, though larger and more successful dollar-wise,
they deign to a quarter of that.
In light of the preceding it cannot be overlooked that
despite all criticism there are few better places in the world to
live than the United States. We live in a land of luxury and free­
dom as few cultures in the broad timescape of all civilization
have enjoyed. What is necessary to understand, however, is that
things wll not remain this way if present trends continue.Life and
liberty are always libel to attack or erosion Today we need not
defend our inalienable rights so much from forces on the outside
as from those within — specifically the inherent tendencies of
capitalism accelerated by human greed. One might argue that
capitalism is the most efficient form of free-flowing government
that civilization has yet to devise. Yet, much like fascism, it is
amoral. It will be the death of our society if we do not keep a
close eye on the tyrannies of corporate power. If the overriding
tendency of our system is to concentrate money into the hands
of the few, it is the tantamount responsibility of those few to take
care of the less fortunate Sadly, history shows that benevolence
and power make exceedingly rare bedmates.
The example of the 1996 Presidential campaign
exposes the extreme state our capitalist democracy has
reached No candidate can expect to have the slightest chance
of being nominated by either of the two major political parties,
much less win the election, without spending at least $40-$50
million. With the exception of someone personally wealthy like
Steve Forbes or the independent Ross Perot, no candidate can
do this without tremendous support by large corporations. This
means the victor will inevitably enter the White House with
many favors to grant his corporate constituents. (On the local
scene Oregon's most progressive politician, Peter DeFazio, has
been priced out of the running for the Senate seat opened by
Mark Hatfield's retirement.) There is no reason to expect the
present defacto government to change its regressive ways
unless the people become informed and intervene at the ballot
box.
r
LOBE & ASSOCIATES
ROBERT LOBE, MSW, ACSW
Ucensed Clinical Social Worker
555 Bond Street
Astoria, OR 97103
(503) 325 8438
FAX (503) 325-4402
RES. (503) 861-1170
THE GLOBAL VILLAGE VS THE NEW WORLD ORDER
"The new phenomenon of our age is the emergence of
transnational corporations with the ability to move production at
will anywhere in the world in order to systematically benefit from
lower wages wherever they are to be found. Transnational corp­
orations now account for one-third of global output; their global
annual sales have reached $4.8 trillion, which is greater than
total international trade The largest 100 multinational corpora­
tions control about one-third of all foreign direct investment. The
globalization of the market is vital to them, both to produce
cheaply and to sell universally Because they do not necessarily
owe allegiance to the countries where they operate, there is a
divorce between the interests of the transnational corporations
and those of society. "
Sir James Goldsmith, author of The Trap, speaking to
the Senate Commerce Committee on GATT, Oct. 5, 1994
With the advent of the "space age" in the late 1950s and
on its tail the new age of electronics -communications satellites,
computers and worldwide webs — Marshall McLuhan coined the
term "Global Village." Within this concept was the hope that with
the aid of electronic communications uniting all the crew mem­
bers of our spaceship earth at the speed of light we might create
a tranquil round village of many races, cultures and religions
coexisting without barriers to travel, trade or belief. Perhaps this
dream still persists in some of the same youthful optimism that
graced the pipe-(smoking)dreaming '60s flower children.Perhaps
within the global movements for the protection of human rights
and the environment there is still a way to bring a unifying
purpose to all God's living things. More likely, as the present
millennium spends to a close, it appears we are headed for
something more like worldwide corporate tyranny instead of a
peaceful global village.
In the twelve years of the Reagan/Bush administrations
something quietly transpired in this country. In that era of behind
the scenes intelligence manipulation and covert action — both
military and economic — it may have been something that was
long in the works; but in the time between 1981 and 1992 the
vision for a deregulated world economy gradually worked its way
into the front page news. We have been properly prepared. Now
it is time to let the GATT out of the bag
There was something both hopeful and Orwellian about
the way President Bush would smile and pronounce his three
favorite words, New-World-Order. But now in the summer of
1996 as the latest General Agreement on Tariffs & Trade
(GATT) — the constitution for this New World Order — becomes
international law for its 128 members (representing 90% of world
trade) it is possible to inspect and evaluate exactly vtfiat they
have in mind for us.
GATT has been around since 1948 and came into being
on the heels of the International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank at a time vtfien the world was settling into its new post­
World War II image. In the 48 years of its existence there have
been eight rounds of adjustment to GATT. The most recent
round of closed-door debate was held in Uruguay and concluded
in the Spring of 1994 after eight years of difficult negotiation.
This last round was pressed into convening by forces in the
United States during President Reagan's first term. Generally,
this new GATT legislation push could be considered the first big
step in implementing the framework for President Bush's New
World Order, a deregulated global "Free Market." As this 500-
page document was written in secret, only in its implementation
has it been made public and criticism has been widespread.
Further comments on GATT by the philosopher and writer (and
former corporate raider) Sir James Goldsmith show exactly
vtfiere things are headed:
"The winners will be those who can benefit from an
almost inexhaustible supply of very cheap labor They will be
the companies who move their production offshore to low-cost
The World Trade Organization, the tribunal of decision­
makers for GATT, will literally supersede our Supreme Court
and Congress. Decisions of trade will be entirely out of our
hands. In the realm of environment, of all countries the United
States wll feel this most. Our standards of product safety,
pesticide control and ingredient labeling are far in excess of
most of the world's yet when it come to GATT's wonderful world
"Harmonization," as it is so diabolically named, these same high
U.S. standards are reduced to the world's lowest common
denominator. Not only will products be imported to the U.S. wth
dangerous DDT levels (in some cases 5000% greater than our
laws allow), but U.S. companies like Nike may go to these same
countries to manufacture their products within the bounds of less
stringent regulations, all to the advantage of big business every-
where — in the short term.
The example of asbestos products serves a perfect
example. The United States bans products that include any level
of asbestos. Yet our neighbor to the north Canada has no such
limitation. Under the guidelines of GATT this U.S. ban would
represent a nen-tanff trade barrier to Canadian asbestos prod­
ucts. In fact, under a previous and similar U.S.-Canada Free
Trade Agreement, Canada is presently suing the U.S. to open
its market to asbestos products. Who's in charge here, anyway?
Certainly not Canada. The short-term effect of NAFTA
(essentially a three-country GATT) has been to decrease manu­
facturing jobs in Canada by 25%, to increase unemployment
from 7% to something creeping up to 15%, and to place 50%
more children into poverty level incomes.
Closer to home recent labor protecting relations in the
Northwest banned the export of raw timber cut from state and
national forests. Under the sweeping manifesto of GATT this
wll represent an illegal barrier to free trade and could be
circumvented. If a country was once a recipient of raw North­
west lumber it cannot be cut off regardless of what our local
government has to say.
These laws contribute to a far-reaching international
corporate totalitarianism. Capital, products, services, insurance
and manufacturing are free to move from one market to the
next. Labor, however, is not. To whose advantage is this?
Companies with enough money to do so are free to
move all around the world seeking cheaper and cheaper labor,
clearly reducing wages and jobs at home. The worker, however,
is subject to immigration laws and is thus restricted. Under the
guidelines of NAFTA, U.S. and Canadian manufacturers are free
to build plants wherever they like in Mexico (that is, their cash
allows) to take advantage of eased environmental and safety
standards and a vastly low wage scale. In this way these
companies are recipients of tremendous windfall profits at the