Views from the South

Rating:
Summary: An eye-opener
Review: I had always wondered the strong cause that ordinary people felt whent hey demonstrated/ got injured and even died during the WTO conferences in Seattle, Italy and New York. That led me to this book, which contains research papers from 4-5 authors, mainly from the 3rd world.

I found it amazing to note how the Transnational Corporations (TNC) of the first-world, browbeat the third world in guise of opening up to competition from outside. Some important points:
- How gloabalization is changing the world's food patterns
- How huge corporations like Monsanto and Cargill have created huge monopolies, whereby they could hold the world population to ransom, a.k.a. the OPEC countries (who individually hardly yield as much power though).
- How in the guise of Intellectual Property Rights, huge corporations patent herbs, plants and crop types, which otherwise have been used in the third world for several hundreds of years.
- How lending institutions like IMF, WB control the destiny of so many poor nations in the world.
- How TNC-led globalization (and thereby greed) has supported tyranny and dictatoships in Africa and South America, and has resulted in the dealths of hundreds of thousands of people over several years.
- How many of the WTO countries, are so poor that they can't even afford to send their diplomats to discuss WTO issues. Also, they don't possess the legal talent by themselves, or hire talent from outside to fight for their cause. Several times they put signatures on documents, not knowing how exactly it would impact them.
- Perhaps the biggest fraud perpetrated by the first world is in the way resolutions are adopted "by consensus" - and NEVER put to vote. The first world has resources and techniques of setting up several working teams which discuss issues with the top 15-20 countries in the world, arrive at a conclusion, and present "the consensus".
- Also, important is the role of leading countries of the third world, like India, South Africa, Malaysia etc., who refused to be beated into submission. This, of course results in a lot of flak in the West-controlled press and television.
- How, even within any first world country, there is a north side and south side, where workers keep losing jobs to globalization. How this has resulted in falling incomes and standard sof living.
- I also agree to a large extent the conclusion reached by the books authors - that the almighty dollar should not drive globalization, but the culture, and life-styles of various countries should also play a huge part in determining global trade policies.

Rating:
Summary: Forced Trade in the WTO
Review: This book contains papers from several authors from different countries. They all explain the problems with the World Trade Organization, how it is essentially run by powerful companies interested in making a profit off the farmers of the third world. The best thing about this book is that it offers different perspectives, different solutions to the same problems. Everyone should read it because it is an excellent book and it covers topics that most of us are ignorant of, while the 75% of the world's population who are farmers are affected by the policies and injustice of this organization every day.