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Dam-it, what’s going on here?

Anil Netto
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It looks like some of our planners are on a dam-building spree, even though the Bakun Dam is expected to produce electricity that the country does not really need for now.

For one thing, Malaysia has a 40 per cent reserve capacity now – even without including the expected excess electricity from Bakun. Even by 2010, we would still have 30 per cent excess capacity. It is only by 2012 that the excess capacity would drop to around 20 per cent.

With all this surplus electricity floating around, it is surprising that they are even thinking of building more dams – and in Sarawak of all places. Imagine, they haven’t figured out what to do with all that electricity from Bakun, and they are talking of newer bigger dams.

Will Tenaga be forced to buy some of that excess electricity – and at what price? 12 sen per unit (the price recently negotiated with Independent Power Producers)? Or 17 sen per unit (the high price agreed when the original Bakun power purchase agreement was signed in 1996)? In the first place, why should Tenaga buy electricity at these prices when its own power generation plants are among the most cost efficient?

Or will the government approve the construction of polluting aluminium smelters in Sarawak to suck up the excess power from Bakun? Now there is even talk of Tenaga taking up a stake in the highly risky business of sending all that excess electricity by submarine cables to the peninsula.

And what about the catchment areas for Bakun? Is there sufficient protection to ensure they are not stripped?

Perhaps we can say thanks to Mahathir for getting us into this mess in the first place. If only we had the vision to use all that money to carry out research into cleaner, less environmentally damaging, alternative sources of energy. If only we could also think of conservation of energy instead of finding new ways of using up electricity that we didn’t really need in the first place. If only…

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 10 (IPS) – Even before the problem-ridden Bakun Dam in eastern Sarawak can be completed, officials are talking of plans to build two more hydroelectric dams in the state, one of which could make Bakun look puny by comparison.

Concerns over the necessity for such dams, how the surplus electricity will be used, the resettlement of indigenous people, and the ‘development’ of catchment areas appear to be going unheeded.

The turbines powering the 2,400 Mw Bakun Dam along the Balui River could start churning by 2009, but planners are still mulling over what to do with all that excess electricity.

Should they approve a power-guzzling — and extremely polluting — aluminium smelter plant in Sarawak? Or should they channel the excess power to the more industrialised Malaysian peninsula via submarine cables laid on the bed of the South China Sea?

The former option would require the participation of major transnational corporations with questionable benefits for the rural economy of Sarawak.

The option to lay cables, on the other hand, would be expensive and is fraught with technical uncertainties. Full article: Surplus electricity – But bigger dams planned

How the NEP equity targets miss the point

Anil Netto
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So is the bumi share of corporate equity 18.9 per cent? Or 45 per cent?

Here’s something to think about this weekend.

In many ways, the NEP 30 per cent target has become almost sacrosanct. On it hinges much of the political legitimacy of a party like Umno – for persistent underachievement can be used as a clarion call to mobilise support along racial lines

But is share ownership a really meaningful indicator of economic well-being for most ordinary Malaysians?

This is an extract from a piece I wrote for the Malaysian Herald last October.

To measure economic justice by looking merely at equity ownership – i.e. the ownership of shares – among the various communities is misleading

Whether we use the par (nominal) value or market value of shares in our calculations, whether we use only listed firms or all firms, whether we include government-linked companies in the bumiputra share – all of this misses the point.

The truth is only a tiny percentage of Malaysians actually own shares. And among those who do hold shares, a small group of them control the bulk of the shares, while the rest are just small-time investors.

What about the vast majority who do not own shares or unit trusts? Where do they fit in?

In truth, the gap between the rich and the poor in Malaysia – like in the United States and many other countries in the world – has been widening. Even among the bumiputras, the gap between the rich and poor has grown larger.

According to the UNDP Human Development Report 2005, only nine countries have reduced the gap between rich and poor. On the other hand, 80 per cent of the world’s population have experienced an increase in income inequality.

Could this be the result of the headlong rush into full-blown market capitalism and corporate-led globalisation?

This is what we should be looking at.

So we need to look at how we can empower our own marginalized communities and other people displaced by ‘development’ – through education, through skills training, by creating the means for economic self-sufficiency.

At the same time, we need to develop our rooted-ness in our ancient cultures and spiritual traditions and not succumb to the overwhelming culture and materialistic values of the global market. We need to promote food security through organic, sustainable traditional farming – not through large-scale cash crops using pesticides and low-wage plantation labour. (I see the government has ‘temporarily’ lifted its ban on the toxic herbicide, paraquat.)

At the end of the day, full-blown market capitalism of the neo-liberal variety is deeply flawed and leads to wide income disparities. It focuses excessively on material development – to the detriment of the environment, the ancient cultures we share, the traditional wisdom and our rich knowledge-base in farming, in healing, in the spirituality found around Nature (see how Jesus often went to the hills to meditate), which are all sidelined.

We should go beyond statistics and look at the authentic development of the human person and create a climate that empowers communities by providing them the means to become self-sufficient.

The Top Five Ways They Block the Real News from Reaching You

Anil Netto
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Ever get the feeling that what you read in the newspapers is not really journalism. Well, you wouldn’t be far wrong. Much of what passes itself off as journalism today is actually slick public relations disguised as journalism, or more accurately, Corporate Media Propaganda.

It was the Australian social scientist Alex Carey who observed that there were three developments of major significance in the last century: “the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.”

This is an excerpt from a piece I wrote for the Malaysian Herald last October:

Power is now moving into the hands of the transnational corporations – and the structures that support them. The corporate media’s role is to condition the public into blindly accepting such a fundamental shift in the way our economies are controlled and managed.

Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky introduced their ‘propaganda model’ of the media in their book ‘Manufacturing Consent’ in 1988. Basically, they said the media have five types of filters that determine what gets presented as news and what does not. They also showed how dissenting views get very little space – in stark contrast to the political-corporate powers-that-be who have easy access to the media (and the public).

Some of these state-corporate hidden messages include the notion that economic growth is the best way forward, that the neo-liberal corporate-led model of globalisation is the best thing since sliced bread, and that corporations are essentially benevolent.

The first filter that determines what is reported is of course the corporate ownership of the media, which heavily influences what is transmitted to the public.

The second is massive advertising revenue which again conditions a newspaper to be “friendly” to business interests for fear that firms may withdraw their advertising spending and go elsewhere.

The third filter is the sourcing of news. Ever notice how the media often quote speeches and statements from the centres of power – whether it is the White House or Putrajaya or economic interests – that are closely linked with the promotion of business interests? And notice the scarcity of interviews with the poor and the marginalised.

The fourth filter comes in the form of negative responses to a media statement or programme – that is public complaints, threats of lawsuits or punitive action or official warnings – all of which can put fear in media owners.

The fifth filter is the demonisation of enemies – whether they are communists, dictators, activists protesting against corporate-led globalisation, environmentalists, or anyone who has a different view about how the economy should be run. These dissidents are often portrayed as crazies, mavericks, ‘radicals’, and fringe groups.

Makeover for predatory IMF and World Bank

Anil Netto
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While attending the Annual Meetings of the Boards of Governors of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Singapore, I soon realised that a slick makeover job, a real PR job, was underway.

In recent years, these two global financial institutions have received some bad press for the tremendous damage their policies have had on developing nations.

The PR job required a range of sweeping cosmetic measures. But could such measures really save the Bank and the IMF from their serious image and credibility crisis? No way.

This is the review I wrote for Inter Press Service after the Annual Meetings were over.

‘There’s no doubt in my mind that the Fund and Bank cannot be reconstructed,” said Glasgow-based political scientist and author John Hilley, who has written about neo-liberal militarism, the Fund and the Bank, in e-mailed comments to IPS. ‘‘Both need to be replaced by bodies concerned with people and planet rather than austerity prescriptions and business values.”

Critics said the elite closure and containment of dissident voices in Singapore should serve as a reminder that these bodies cannot be ‘constructively engaged’.

Hundreds of civil society activists were forced to divide their numbers between Singapore, where accredited activists were ‘constructively engaged’ inside the convention centre, and neighbouring Batam in Indonesia, where others held protests and parallel meetings. This divide-and-rule tactic may have weakened the overall impact of the usual civil society protests surrounding such meetings.

‘‘The Singapore meetings really showed how undemocratic the Bank and the Fund were,” said Achmad Ya’kub of the Indonesian Federation of Peasant Unions (FSPI), who was deported after being interrogated for 14 hours in Singapore. ‘‘They lost the very little credibility that they still had.”

The sentiment in some activist circles is that civil society organisations should boycott all future meetings with the Bank. Civil society ‘engagement’ in the consultative process, it is argued, indirectly helps to legitimise the WB-IMF annual proceedings..

Hilley warned that no one should be taken in by the supposedly more benign face of the Bank. ‘‘The Wolfowitz presidency, the IFC’s business agenda and the resolute adherence to growth-based policies are all testament to the Bank’s real priorities,” he said. The IFC (International Finance Corporation) is the private sector arm of the Bank, whose president, Paul Wolfowitz, is widely seen as an architect of aggressive U.S. foreign policy in Iraq and the Middle-East. Full article

Economic growth or economic sufficiency?

Anil Netto
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With global warming creeping up on us, it is clearly time to take stock of the way we do things. Few people would dispute that our pattern of unbridled economic growth is contributing to climate change as never before. Factories spew toxic emissions into the murky skies, lorry and car exhaust pipes belch fumes into the air while bulldozers mow down pristine rain-forests.

And yet there is a reluctance to point fingers at the corporate culprits and our unsustainable model of economic growth. We cannot aspire to higher and higher levels of consumption without harming the ecological balance and depriving others of a decent standard of living.

Let’s take a look at the choices that Thailand is coming to grips with. It has put its negotiations for a Free Trade Agreement with the United States on hold. Certainly, we could learn a thing or two about what a “sufficiency economy” is all about from our northern neighbour.

This is an article I wrote for Inter Press Service last September:

The king, who has travelled extensively in remote areas of the country to see firsthand the impact of policies on the poor, is hugely revered in Thailand. His vision of self-sufficiency based on the eradication of greed is rooted in Buddhism and Thai culture. The sight of the king sitting down on the ground, chatting with villagers about their livelihood is familiar among many Thais, winning him many admirers. Guided by a philosophy of economic self-reliance, and emphasising agrarian reform, the king has a famous line: ‘‘pho gin pho yu’’ (literally ‘‘enough to eat, enough to live on’’).

‘‘It is not important to be an economic tiger,” said the king a year after the Thai economy crashed in 1997. “What matters is that we have enough to eat and to live. A self-sufficient economy will provide us just that. It helps us to stand on our own and produce enough for our consumption.” He constantly reminds Thais that while pursuing material security, they should not forget to strive for inner peace of mind through spiritual purification.

Not surprisingly, this ideal of self-sufficiency backed by the royalty and grounded in Buddhist ethics is heady stuff in Thailand. ‘‘It has been a powerful counterweight, at least ideologically, to the big growth, big exports, big corporation and big corruption, CEO-style of Thaksin,’’ observed the social anthropologist. Full article

The 400-lb gorilla vs the skinny global justice movement

Anil Netto
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The real war in our world today is not “the war on terror” but a larger, more critical struggle for the soul of our world.

A monumental battle is taking place between those who want to ram through neo-liberal economic policies that favour the large multinationals and those trying to formulate more enlightened pro-people economic policies that promote social justice and harmony with Nature and the spiritual realm.

It is a struggle that is manifested in most countries around the world in different ways. Think about it.

The following is an excerpt from a piece I wrote for the Malaysian Herald last August:

In one corner of the ring, sits a 400-pound gorilla, the United States surrounded by its elite network power brokers, promoting a neo-liberal globalisation that largely benefits transnational corporations, widens income disparities and harms the environment.

In the other corner of the ring, you have the skinny global justice movement, surrounded by activists and boosted by the support of people like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia who want to provide a real alternative to the neo-liberal order.

These countries have been investing heavily in health care and education and using oil revenues to empower the rural poor. Such pro-people policies have put neo-liberal pro-corporate policies in a very bad light.

No wonder George Bush hates Hugo Chavez’s guts – and Chavez calls Bush a ‘devil’. But it goes well beyond name-calling. Behind it lies a struggle for the very soul of the world. In essence, it is a struggle between the corporate-led model of globalisation (favouring the elites and transnational corporations) and pro-people economic policies that favour the vast majority of people who are poor.

Beware the ‘reformers’ in sheep’s clothing

Anil Netto
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When I attended the Annual Meetings of the Boards of Governors of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Singapore, one thing I quickly realised was how even language – the common everyday words we are familiar with – could be hijacked by Big Business to mask ulterior motives. Sugar-coated, benevolent words are used to disguise the mercenary goals of major transnational corporations.

Beware especially when they start talking about “reforms”. Always ask, “reforms” in whose favour: Big Business or the ordinary people? There’s a world of difference between the two.

This is an excerpt from a piece I wrote for the Herald in Malaysia last September:

The eeriness of it all reminded me of Orwell’s “1984” and Big Brother. What struck me most was the ‘doublespeak’ used throughout the annual meetings to hijack ordinary words to serve the hidden agenda of neo-liberal policies.

Thus, there was much talk about ‘poverty eradication’, ‘good governance’ and ‘sustainable development’. This was part of a public relations offensive to mask the fact that the IMF and the World Bank have been pushing neo-liberal policies that hurt the poor and harm the environment. Such policies have benefited large transnational corporations and the private sector instead. For all the talk of poverty eradication, the actual voices of the poor were nowhere to be heard inside the convention centre, save for the activists who articulated their concerns.

Even the word “reforms” has been hijacked. Thus, you are a “reformer” if you are introducing business-friendly policies such as promoting privatisation, weakening regulations on labour and environmental standards, and removing subsidies for essential services such as health care and education. You are not deemed a “reformer” if your economic policies protect workers and the environment over corporate interests.

There was much talk of “good governance’, which according to the Bank’s president Paul Wolfowitz, was broader than anti-corruption. This was the same Wolfowitz who has been widely seen as an architect of aggressive US policies in Iraq and the Middle East.

In a sense, this is no coincidence. Corporate-led globalisation promotes a grab to control and secure scare natural resources and this is essentially what is going on around the world especially in the rush to secure strategic control of oil in the Middle East. It also leads to imperialistic wars (think the “war on terror”); the increase in arms spending by the superpowers, which benefits large US and Europeans arms manufacturing firms; and the push for privatisation – which in turn to leads to an attack on labour, wages and the collective bargaining process.

For all the talk of ‘good governance’, the IMF and World Bank have done business in the past with dictators and corrupt regimes, putting entire nations into debt. This sort of debt is known as ‘odious debt’ because the ordinary people in those borrower nations were not consulted about the loans: the deals are essentially between the international financial institutions and the local elites. And yet, it is the ordinary people who have to bear the brunt of repayment of loans.

Misguided Christian Zionists

Anil Netto
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I sometimes come across Christians with a distorted view of the Middle East. Blindly supporting Israel, they fail to see that oppressive and expansionist Zionist policies have led to much misery and suffering among Palestinians, who live in dehumanising conditions whether in Gaza or the West Bank or as refugees in neighbouring countries.

This is an excerpt from a piece I wrote last August for the Herald in Malaysia:

To be anti-Semitic (anti-Jew) is to be bigoted and racist. To be anti-Zionist, on the other hand, is to legitimately oppose a political and ideological movement that reflects a sense of Western European ethnic supremacy and domination in the Middle East.

Unfortunately, some people – including Christians who misguidedly support the Zionist movement – sometimes accuse critics of Zionist ideology of being anti-Semitic.

These Christians invariably subscribe to ‘Christian Zionism’, a modern theological and political movement that embraces the most extreme ideological positions of Zionism. Such extreme positions place further obstacles to the possibility of achieving a just peace between Israel and Palestine.

The Christian Zionist worldview sees the Gospel through the lens of empire and colonialism instead of through the prism of the love, compassion and justice of Christ. Christian Zionists therefore place heavy emphasis on apocalyptic events, military might and the end times, which they believe will lead to an almighty showdown at Armageddon. For them, the state of Israel can do no wrong, no matter how patently brutal, colonialist or racist their policies may be.

The bishops of the various denominations in Jerusalem have roundly criticised these misguided Christians and their beliefs. “We categorically reject Christian Zionist doctrines as false teaching that corrupts the biblical message of love, justice and reconciliation,” said the Patriarch and Local Heads of Churches in Jerusalem in a joint statement on 22 August 2006.

The “Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism” was signed by Michel Sabbah, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem; Swerios Malki Mourad, the Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem; Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal of the Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East; and Bishop Munib Younan of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land.

“We further reject the contemporary alliance of Christian Zionist leaders and organisations with elements in the governments of Israel and the United States that are presently imposing their unilateral pre-emptive borders and domination over Palestine,” the Patriach and bishops added. This, they said, inevitably leads to unending cycles of violence that undermine the security of all peoples of the Middle East and the rest of the world.

World Bank profits from poor nations

Anil Netto
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When people think of the World Bank, the image they often see in their minds is one of a global financial institution that provides loans to developing nations to raise their standard of living. That is basically the picture that the Bank’s PR people would like you to see.

The reality is quite different. The World Bank actually profits from poorer countries in terms of net cashflow going into the Bank.

When Inter Press Service asked me to cover the proceedings of the meetings of the Boards of Governors of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Singapore late last year, I jumped at the chance. It was a rare opportunity to enter the “lions’ den”, so to speak, and see first-hand how the movers and shakers of the global financial architecture operate.

What struck me most was the air of Big Brother all around the impressive Suntec convention centre in Singapore. Battened down under a heavy security cordon, the convention centre had plasma TV sets beaming news from BBC, CNN etc – all flashing the same corporate-friendly messages in benevolent sweet-sounding language. The titans of Big Business – the transnational corporations – are indeed the new rulers of the universe.

At the convention centre, men and women in immaculate suits, led by Paul Wolfowitz, the Bank’s president (the same guy who pushed for more aggression against Iraq), spoke soothing words of “poverty eradication” and “good governance”. But there was one thing missing – the poor people, those people the Bank purports to help, were nowhere to be seen, their views unsolicited.

This was the article I came up with:

SINGAPORE, Sep 19 (IPS) – The World Bank receives more from developing countries than what it disburses to them says a new report released Tuesday as finance ministers endorsed a controversial new Bank plan to tackle corruption in developing countries.

The Social Watch Report 2006, released here at the annual meetings of the Bank group and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), stressed the need to reform the current international financial structure. Net transfers (disbursements minus repayments minus interest payments) to developing countries from the Bank and the International Bank for Reconstruction (IBRD), have been negative every year since 1991, the report pointed out.

The IBRD is now not making any contribution to development finance other than providing funds to service its outstanding claims. The International Development Association (IDA), which provides interest-free credits and grants to the poorest developing countries to boost their economic growth, is the only source of net financing from the Bank. Full article

Buying ‘goodwill’ – RM4 billion worth of it

Anil Netto
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When are petroleum royalties not petroleum royalties? When they are deemed to be “goodwill funds”, of course.

If you suffer from insomnia, then wading through the Malaysian Auditor General’s report may be just the thing for you. But then again, what you find in there might give you even more sleepless nights. Just reading through one chapter of the report “inspired” me to write the following article for Aliran Monthly about the lack of accountability and transparency surrounding the Treasury’s management of royalties collected from oil extracted in states such as Terengganu. We are not talking peanuts here but big money….

Basically, the Treasury is supposed to make allocations out of the Fund to various ministries (and via these ministries to federal agencies), financial institutions, and federal and state-level offices.

According to the Auditor General’s Report 2005, in line with a directive, the Treasury was supposed to create an Accounts Committee, chaired by the Treasury’s Chief Secretary, to administer the Fund. The Committee was supposed to comprise representatives from the Prime Minister’s Department (including the Economic Planning Unit), the Treasury, and the Finance Ministry.

But the Auditor General (AG) said such a Committee had not been set up – surely a serious concern.

Instead, a “Central-level Committee”, which appears less high-powered, was formed. This Committee, which includes representatives from ministries and implementation agencies, meets twice a year to discuss and approve allocations. It is not clear who exactly is in this Committee. Full article

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