June 1998

The power of the state is in retreat before an onslaught of giant corporates, fuelled by a frenzy of privatisation. The recent mega-mergers confirm the process of globalisation is beyond the control of governments, but should citizens accept it?
The pace of corporate change is impressive. Hardly a week goes by without the media announcing some new marriage between major companies, the creation of some new colossus, a mega-merger designed to create the super-giants of the future.
Among the (...)

The Asian crisis has claimed its first victim - apart from the millions of workers now unemployed - General Suharto. President for over thirty years, he had a monopoly of power based on emoluments and corruption. Finally, he proved unable to carry out the reforms demanded by the International Monetary Fund or to stop the riots. On 21 May 1998 he resigned. His successor, Jusuf Habibie, has given some signs of change with the announcement of elections, the release of political prisoners and changes at the top of the army. But will the country get the thorough-going change it needs?

Now that the dictator has resigned and been replaced by Mr Habibie, whether the transition is towards a “constitutional” or “people’s power” model of democracy, the army is sure to play a decisive role, even if it decides to take a back seat.

On a visit to Israel at the end of May, a United States Congress delegation led by Republican Newt Gingrich and Democrat Richard Gephardt confirmed its support for Binyamin Netanyahu’s hard line and its opposition to any attempt by Washington to put pressure on Israel. But the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock is complicating US strategy in the Gulf. Unable to mobilise its Arab allies against Iraq, America is also encountering reticence on the part of the European countries and running up against an increasingly independent Russia.

Iran continues to preoccupy both Russia, with which it has close relations, and the United States. Encouraged by President Khatami’s call for a “dialogue of civilisations”, Washington is dropping proceedings against Gazprom, Total and Petronas which have signed an agreement with Iran to develop a large gas field. The Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (Ilsa), adopted by Congress in 1996, had met with stiff resistance throughout the world, nowhere more so than in Europe. Washington’s new approach towards Iran is all the more important as President Khatami has limited room for manoeuvre.

The Christian Democrats are in danger of losing the election on 27 September and Chancellor Helmut Kohl, in power since 1982, may have to step down. Opinion polls at the end of May gave Social Democrat Gerhard Schröder a clear lead. The old Chancellor is a past master in the art of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Will he do it again? In any case, Germans are not exactly thrilled by the alternative on offer. The trouble is that the Social Democrat candidate has not put the real choice between different kinds of society at the heart of his campaign.

Denmark is being shaken by an unprecedented social movement. For the first time since 1961, the workers’ rejection of the biannual agreement between the blue-collar trade unions and the employers gave way to a two-week wildcat strike and the government was forced to intervene. At issue is the length of the working week, opening an important debate on the future of prosperous societies.

The Lomé Convention, which has been renewed and revised three times since 1975, has historically symbolised Europe’s ambitions to establish new relations with the South. No more were these to be dominated by economic interests and power politics. Despite the modesty of its achievements, it is one of the last remaining means for protecting the world’s poor countries from the full force of globalisation. But not for long. Europe is preparing to negotiate the fifth Convention, and international finance and trade organisations are insisting that it be brought into line with the rules of the new world economic order.

India’s controversial nuclear testing has redirected attention to the subcontinent where the Indian People’s Party (BJP), the biggest Hindu nationalist movement, emerged winners in this March’s elections. The BJP has its roots in the Hindu nationalist movement that emerged in the 1920s, that sought to strengthen the Hindus in the face of the Muslim minority, and this allegiance still remains a constraint to the BJP. Some people have been pleasantly surprised by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s reassuring attitude towards Pakistan. But there is still rising Hindu nationalism - and those nuclear tests.

Social collapse in Bombay has taken the form of a growing number of extra-judicial police killings. During the past three years there have been almost 150 deaths in what have come to be known as police “encounters”. Here, in the state capital of Maharashtra and India’s commercial heart, the distinction between crime and politics has become blurred.

A 21st Century Silk Road is what people are calling the project for a Eurasian corridor in Southern Russia, which has been launched by the European Union with the backing of the United States. Road and rail networks, ports, pipelines and an air corridor are providing access to the region’s newly-independent states, but by routes which avoid Russia and Iran but increase the crucial role of Turkey. No holds are barred in this struggle to exploit natural resources.

The 150th anniversary of France’s abolition of slavery was the occasion for many events marking the 19th century black slave trade. But the enslavement of human beings is just as much a reality today, affecting millions of women and children across the globe. As this exploitation starts to reach the heart of Western Europe, awareness of the phenomenon is slowly growing. The children’s march was the first public demonstration

The facts about the world’s child labourers are only now beginning to be understood for the international scandal and the economic folly that they are. A scandal, because it deprives millions of them of their childhood; and a folly, because it denies them any hope of education, and thus seriously undermines their countries’ hopes of economic lift-off.

Virtual imprisonment and abuse, the hallmarks of slavery in an earlier time, are now the daily experience of thousands of Sri Lankan women (and others from Africa), employed as servants in today’s Beirut. The authorities are turning a blind eye and the public at large is oblivious to this trade in human labour, which goes on behind the closed doors of the employment agencies and the employer families.