Articles

Barnet, Richard and John Cavanagh, "Empire of the Fun", The Guardian Weekly, July 12-18, 2001.

Barnet and Cavanagh argue that the U.S. entertainment industry has had a negative impact on the world, essentially homogenizing global culture and spreading free-market ideologies. Because of this, they say that governments, families and tribal structures are being thrown into crisis as industrial music producers and "Hollywood" are becoming the primary educators of youth. Citing the impact of the spread of western pop music, Barnet and Cavanagh remarks that local artists face unemployment and traditional, cultural music may be facing its demise. In another example, they argue that "world beat" (synthesizing traditional, cultural music with western pop music) is simply another way to exploit less industrialized nations' heritage for profit. Further, the remark that instead of spending spare time nurturing and instructing children or participating in government/civic life, more people are planting themselves in front of their TV (which they say is the "most powerful tool of mass education in poor countries").

Vidal, John, "Brazil Sets Out on the Road to Oblivion", The Guardian Weekly, vol. 165, no. 4, July 19-25, 2001.

Vidal warns that the Amazon jungle faces "final assault" by Brazilian government
Along with hi-tech development in Manaus has come "slums, drugs and various social problems". Why? Current government backed projects include highways, dams, power lines, mines, gas and oil, fields, canals, ports, logging concessions. If these projects are fast-tracked through Parliament as it is feared, scientists and critics remark that the result would be the felling of two fifths of the world's remaining tropical rainforest. "In effect, after 20,000 years of barely being touched and even less understood, the world's greatest forest would be transformed in a quarter of a single Western lifetime," writes Vidal. Dr. William Laurence, a Smithsonian Institution researcher predicts, "well over half the forest in Brazil would no longer be in a pristine state within a generation, and about 30% would have been lost forever". Vidal comments, "The Amazon ecosystem…is one of the great generators of world climate. Largescale deforestation…could lead to up to 20% less rainfall in the region". Vidal also writes that building a highway in Brazil will inevitably invite "colonists, ranchers and loggers" and "start an irreversible cycle of degradation, fire risk and possible eventual desertification", not to mention spawn a variety of social problems, such as child prostitution. International financing (provided by the World Bank and others) has enabled the government to "develop" the rainforest regions.

Vidal, John, "Fighting to Save the Waters of Life", The Guardian Weekly, Vol. 165, No. 1.

Governments, industrialists, colonialists interested in upgrading its roads and "inevitably bringing in loggers, miners, oil companies and soya farmers". This development will also have an impact on the Pirarcu, the second longest fish in the world and a primary source of food and income for people who live in the Amazon floodplains, called varzea. The varzea is "one of the most endangered eco systems in the region". Local communities to the region have come into conflict with outside fishermen, who have larger boats and nets. This resistance, called the "lakes movement" seeks to protect their natural resources and prirarcu. "By protecting the fish in their breeding season, and looking after the environment, we find we can take more fish," remarked a community leader. The World Wildlife Fund for Nature is helping to organize the communities and teaching them how to market their fish while using sustainable farming practices.

Bové, José, "On the Front Line of a New World War", LeMonde (in The Guardian Weekly, June 28-July 4, 2001).

José Bové begins his essay by describing free trade as the "formidable doctrine that has totalitarian overtones and global implications." He then critiques four aspects of free trade: 1.) He criticizes the idea that markets possess "self-regulatory virtues"; 2.) He criticizes notion that competition generates wealth for everyone; 3.) He criticizes the idea that world prices are a valid criterion for deciding the direction that agricultural production should take since those prices "concern only a tiny proportion of world output and consumption" and 4.) He criticizes the notion that free trade is the driving force behind economic growth.
Bové points out that markets have been hit by a wave of instability and thus, contrary to what the neo-liberals claim, markets are spontaneously unstable and chaotic. He argues in favor of state intervention "to ensure their regulation, to adjust price trends, to guarantee that producers are paid, and to allow farming to continue to exist." He also reasons that everyone needs to "make sure it respects three fundamental requirements: food sovereignty (the right of peoples and countries to produce their food freely and to protect their farming from the ravages of world "competition"); food safety (the right to protect oneself against any health risk); and the conservation of biodiversity."