The New Rulers of the World
Written and directed by John Pilger
Screening on SBS, Tuesday, August 21, 8.30pm
REVIEW BY SEAN HEALY
"Do you know the difference between Tanzania and Goldman Sachs? The gross national product of Tanzania is $2.2 billion, distributed among a population of 25 million. The annual profits of [Wall Street investment bank] Goldman Sachs are $2.2 billion, shared among 161 partners" — author and anti-debt campaigner Susan George.
In The New Rulers of the World — a John Pilger investigation, the Australian-born, award-winning journalist turns his attention to the giant multinationals and the governments and institutions, such as the IMF and the World Bank, that back them.
The program takes the viewer behind the hype of the new "global" economy, where the divisions between rich and poor have never been greater. The assets of US car giant General Motors are greater than that of Denmark; the sales of Ford are bigger than the economy of South Africa. Golfer Tiger Woods earns more by promoting Nike than almost the entire work force in Indonesia making Nike products.
Pilger focuses on the appalling sweatshop conditions in Indonesia, where workers, paid an average of around US$1 a day, are forced to live in dormitories made of packing cases. They have no clean running water and suffer the continuous possibility of disease.
Posing as a fashion buyer, Pilger secretly films in a typical Gap factory in what is known as an "export processing zone". He talks to some of the workers who are on a 36-hour shift, but are too intimidated to complain. Pilger cites the Gap Code of Vendor Conduct in which working conditions, wages and hours and monitoring and enforcement are supposedly controlled.
Dita Sari, trade union leader and former political prisoner, believes that this code of conduct is almost impossible to implement. The rate of unemployment in Indonesia is very high — therefore cheap labour is readily available.
Gap boxer shorts cost £8 in Britain; the workers are paid less than 10 US cents per pair. Running shoes? £100 in Britain; $1 to the workers. The CEO of Gap earns US$500,000; the company's profits are US$1.38 billion.
Pilger discusses the complicity of both the US and Britain in General Suharto's seizure of power in the mid-1960s. As Roland Challis, BBC South-East Asia correspondent from 1964 to 1969, points out, despite the claims of the British that they were unaware of what was going on at the time, "there were bodies being washed up on the lawn of the British consulate in Surabaya".
The US press glowed with reports of the economic advantages to the West; Time described the situation as "vengeance with a smile ... the West's best news for years in Asia"; the New York Times reported "a gleam of light in Asia", while the CIA supplied a list of 5000 opponents to be assassinated.
Pilger pin-points the seeds of globalisation in this part of the world to a secret meeting convened by the Time-Life corporation in Geneva in 1967, attended by some of the most powerful capitalists in the world and Suharto's ministers.
"Most of the Indonesian economy", reports Pilger, "was redesigned in a week. This was the direct result of the bloodbath in Indonesia the year before, in which the United States and Britain has played important, supportive roles".
Basically, global capital hammered out the conditions for its intervention in Indonesia. Mining was discussed in one room, light industry, food services, banking and finance in others, until the carve-up of the country's economy was complete, and access had been secured to all of Indonesia's vast mineral wealth, markets and cheap labour — what US president Richard Nixon described as "the greatest prize in Asia".
When asked by Pilger if the foreign business community was aware that not only were they dealing with a corrupt dictator but with a mass murderer, John Arnold, the chairperson of the British Chamber of Commerce, is momentarily lost for words, and finally admits the situation is "hugely unfortunate".
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were originally established after World War II to rebuild the economies of Europe. Later, loans were offered to poor countries, but only if they privatised their economies and allowed Western corporations free access to their raw materials.
The debt which accumulated was used, according to Barry Coates from the World Development Movement, as an instrument for the IMF and the World Bank to get their policies implemented, thus setting up a vicious cycle of poverty in the poorest countries.
In his 30-year rule, it has been estimated that up to US$10 billion, or one third of World Bank loans, to Indonesia was "lost" or stolen by Suharto before he was forced to step down.
Pilger asks Nicholas Stern, the World Bank's chief economist, how such an extraordinary situation could have arisen. He quotes from a 1997 internal report: "at least 20-30% of the government of Indonesia development budget funds are diverted through informal payments to government staff and politicians". Stern replies, "That number [20-30%] was plucked out of the air ... the person who wrote that was guessing."
For his part, the IMF's first deputy managing director, Stanley Fischer, is opposed to the cancellation of the entire debt owed by developing countries and disputes the report from the Human Rights Commission of the US which states that "institutions of globalisation have yet to seriously address the issues of human rights in a democratic fashion".
Buts as the "slave labourers" in Indonesia, with less money to pay for food, education and health, find their productivity slumping due to inhumanly long hours and little nourishment, demonstrators against globalisation the world over are rallying to the cause — in Seattle, Melbourne, Genoa, London.
"Millions are beginning to make their voices heard on the new economic order being imposed on them, especially young people. The evidence and views in The New Rulers of the World will strike a chord with many viewers, as globalisation touches all our lives", says Pilger.